Andy's Glasses

I am dentally challenged. Always have been. ‘Special’ in the teeth department. For the first year of my life I had no dental problems at all. It was after that it all started. And continued pretty much my entire life. Fillings, abscesses, extractions, crowns, my mouth is barely my own any longer, so full of amalgam, gold(!!!) and, since the recent implants, titanium. Plus some nice shiny ceramics. My front teeth remain ‘my own’. The yellow ones. All the others, shot to shit or gone and replaced, symptomatic of our disposable world. Plastic bottles, teeth, shoulders…

Thus I am ‘known’ at my dentist’s practice. They have me on speed dial. The place is a 4 minute walk from work and I’ve gone there f’rever. And, sadly, frequently. Not just because my dentist is a gorgeous blonde, but because she is simply the best dentist in the world. Not that that’s particularly hard, most of the others are sadistic mouth-drillers and cash-hungry torturers. (Well that’s dentist done then, which profession should I ‘analyse ’ next?).

And last night I had an appointment for… an extraction!!! You know, tie a bit of string round the tooth, attach other end to the door and SLAM! Job done. Though Dr Katharina refused my offer of the string I’d brought along because she wanted to do it more scientifically. She pumped sufficient local anaesthetic in to numb an elephant. And yet it didn’t numb my mouth sufficiently. So she put some more in, this time using a hose-pipe attachment rather than the syringe. Ahhhh, that should do it. But it didn’t. For some reason everything from my nose to my testicles was numb, except the fucking tooth in question. Though we were both bored by that point, and keen to get home, so she yanked it anyway.

There was blood. Most of which I managed to carefully get on my pillowcase and bedsheets last night, to avoid having to spit it into the sink. That was a result.

And now I’m better. Another day, another medical drama. Bring on old age!!! (Shoot me now)

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Let’s face it, no-one wants a bunch of convicted criminals running round the streets. If we did, we’d move to Russia. Or Peckham. And yet when a prisoner actually escapes from prison, we’re instantly engaged and in admiration for the act. Because everyone appreciates that getting out of prison is not very easy. That’s, almost, the whole point of prison. And why its called ‘prison’ and not ‘Travelodge’; both are places you desperately want to leave but only one lets you. So when young Daniel Khalife breaks out of Wandsworth prison, clinging to the undercarriage of a food delivery truck, I’m actually, just for a short while, cheering him on. Its brave. Its opportunistic. Its planned… a bit. And its audacious. And because Daniel’s only in there for ‘spying for Iran’, its not like he represents a danger to small children or old ladies, so we can just appreciate the escape itself.

But those of us who grew up watching ‘The Great Escape’ (EVERY FUCKING CHRISTMAS FOR DECAAAADES!!!), we appreciate the planning required, the incredible attention to detail needed. All the movies and tv shows with ‘Colditz’ in the title made the same point, as did ‘Alcatraz’ films and those with the word ‘Stalag’. Unfortunately, young Dan didn’t pay sufficient attention to Steve McQueen, Donald Pleasance et al and seemed to miss that point.

So he plans his ‘breakout’. He works in the kitchen and obviously noted the arrival and departure of the food trucks, cos much as ‘an army marches on its stomach’, so ‘prisoners stay put on their stomachs’. Everyone has to eat. And he shredded his bedsheets to make the ‘handles’ for him to hold onto under the lorry. Made clips to secure them. Probably noted that the geezers with the mirrors-at-the-end-of-long-poles always took their cigarette break at the precise moment the vehicle left the prison. And thus formed his devilish plan. And it worked!!!! Success!!! I’m bloody OUT!!!

Which is where just a little more planning would have been useful. Like: I’ll be dressed like a prison chef. Like: I might need some money. A passport. Friends. Helpers. Somewhere to hide. But he didn’t. He just ‘winged it’. Which is why he’s now back in custody, being picked up about 3 miles from Wandsworth after sleeping on park benches and river tow paths for 3 nights whilst the police did their ‘headless chicken’ act to try and find him. Then they got a break! Yes. A witness saw him climb out from underneath the lorry at a roundabout!!! Grab him!!! Quick!!! Oh, that was 3 days ago, just after he escaped. Anyway, they called in MI5, MI6, the anti-terrorist squad, the escaped prisoner squad and a few other squads and acronyms and caught the fucker in Kew.

Another dream shattered. Score one to all the squads, score -97 for Wandsworth Prison.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

There’s no football. It has been decreed that: just as the new football season gets properly under way and the old excitements, hopes and… ok, anxieties return anew, they stop everything for ‘international breaks’. Those great games of absolutely no interest whatsoever to anyone which give our star players and bestest idols an extra chance to get injured. Or jet-lagged. Or sometimes… both. I really don’t care that England played Ukraine, in Poland, for obvious reasons, that that’s where most Ukrainians can now be found. And it was a draw. Well, was it really? That’s fascinating. My team are second in the league and I’m supposed to be interested in some qualifying game for a tournament years away.

So I watched some rugby. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away. He took away (meaningful) football and gaveth a shit-load of amazing World Cup rugby. France beat New Zealand. France are the favourites, but only in terms of betting. In terms of ‘nations being loved’, they remain irretrievably rooted to the bottom. They even took time to boo President Macron as he made his welcoming address. Almost as rude as it is totally deserved. But the pundits consoled any All Blacks listening after the match (which was absolutely brilliant) by stating that South Africa lost their opening match in the last World Cup, but still went on to win it.

They didn’t tell that to Romanian fans after losing their first match, which I thought a bit inconsiderate. They only lost to Ireland (also favourites) 82-8. But there’s everything left to play for. (What’s the Romanian for: ‘just go home now’??)

Then England came out to play, the team everyone in the world cares about over and beyond all others. And were underdogs against Argentina, itself a great insult. Unless you’re Argentinian. Our super flanker Tom Curry returned after a long injury and we were thrilled to have him back. For the three minutes he lasted until being sent off by a referee obviously being bribed by Far Eastern gambling syndicates. But playing with 14 men against 15 for the remaining 73 minutes seemed to galvanise the England team into the most fantastic mind-set. They were brilliant. On the other side of the ball, the Argies were simply abysmal. Thank God. The worst performance by them since Maradona was around to inspire them. Since Eva Peron was buried. So now I’m all fired up to win the whole thing.

Meanwhile, over in New York, Coco Gauff won the American Open for gels. I kind’a forgot that, despite seemingly being around for decades, she’s only 19 still. And plays the game… as well as I do. Some might say even better, others ‘what the fuck are you on???’, but I’m glad she won. Not so sure I’ll be thrilled by either Djokovic or Medvedev winning the mens.

So there you are. They take away our football but we shall survive!!!

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I’ve been promoted. In, like, a really short time, just a couple weeks, really, I’ve been elevated from The Bastard Cyclist from Hell!!! to fully-fledged ‘Terrorist’. And I started with such good intentions…

The problem is that riding electric bikes is totally addictive. Riding normal bikes is probably almost as good, but with more sweat and forced exercise. And no-one wants that. It’s the feeling of total ‘freedom’ which you get as you sit upon and switch on. And the fabulous power that the tiny little motor bestows upon you. I ride on power setting ‘5’. I have no idea what the other 4 are even there for.

This week, in case you missed it, and really, you’d have be actually dead to have missed that heat and sunshine, its been dry. And bright. And lovely. Plus, it’s the last week of school holidays so the traffic is just one eighth of its normal term-time lock-jam. So it seemed silly NOT to go in by bike a few times.

Traffic lights are (now) a minor issue. If it’s a big, complex, 4-way junction, I’ll sit there, almost patiently, even though I don’t have a ‘patience’ gland, it was removed at birth. And then I’ll go just like a normal ‘citizen’, when I’m green. But if it’s a more simple or quiet junction I’ll sit there for as long as it takes to ascertain the risk factor, and once that reaches zero, I’m gone. It’s a form of intolerant colour blindness. When you see a line of cars waiting for the lights, you go round them. It doesn’t matter which way you go. Inside is ok, outside a little trickier, the pavement my last resort. But I’ll do that any time to avoid sitting behind 3 cars. Because I can.

Google maps takes me quite a brilliant route to the City. Across the Heath Extension (cos its the only parkway in all of north London where bikes are actually allowed; all the others I just ride more carefully, more politely, cos I shouldn’t be there). In Camden I ride through a housing estate in a pedestrian only area, again, its part of ‘cycle route number 6’. I’ve never looked for the other 5.

Basically, NOTHING holds me up, slows me down or stops me. The whole process appeals greatly to my restless spirit. But once the weather turns bad again, once the traffic reaches school-term levels, when every South African woman gets her Range Rover out to drive little ‘Smits’ three blocks to school, oblivious to the world around her, I shall polish my bike and return it to the shed. To hibernate. Unless there’s another tube strike.

Happy Riding,

A xxxx

Britain is broken! It’s not working. Needs a fix. Several fixes. Thus spake Kier Starmer (zzzzzz) and several of his cohorts, politicising every disaster confronting the country. Which is his job. And would appear to be the job to which he’s best suited, as he wasn’t much of a lawyer and his time as ‘shadow Brexit minister’ had him utter virtually nothing as he stood at Corbyn’s shoulder with ‘that rictus grin’. So ‘moaner-in-chief’ is his perfect role in life. Would that make him a good prime minister (heaven forbiddddd!!!!) I don’t know. But he may have a minor point. We need to count the gates.

We have NHS-gate. The ongoing, never-ending disaster which is our ‘wonderful, world-leading, free-at-the-point-of-service’ catastrophe of waiting lists, striking doctors, cancelled appointments and loads of healthy old people clogging up beds because of…

Care-system-gate. The problem is, we don’t have much of a care system for the old. Well, we’ve never had old people before, have we. Have we?? Ahhh, but with an aging population held together by sticking tape supplied by the over-burdened NHS, ‘we’ are getting older. But have no places to dump the aged because, like the NHS, there’s an expectation that ‘the state should provide’.

School-gate. Not the one where you go in, the other one, the current crisis. Well, not much of a crisis really, just a little problem where kids going to any school built between 1950 and 1979 (and that was the post-war ‘boom’, after the war ‘boom’, blew them all up) needs to go in with a hard hat and protective vest because his schoolroom ceiling is coming down any minute now. They built them with a ‘cheap alternative’ to concrete, called ‘RAAC’. Which is an acronym of ‘Really Shitty Useless Cheap Nasty Crumbly Rubbish’. Ok, I need to work on my acronyms. But it’s shit and has a low life-expectancy, which ends… about NOW!!!

Strike-gate. Trains, teachers, doctors, opticians. We’re all on strike. Not sure why but WE FUCKING ARE!!!! POWER TO THE WORKERS!!!!

And you can’t list disasters without ‘boat-people-gate’. Wouldn’t be fair. They come over, get dumped in a barge in the Solent, which proves to have various diseases integrated into the water system, get put in hotels, wait 6 months before we can put them back on the boats going the other way, and all at a cost of 569,332,298 quid every month. Possibly every week. It’s so much and so stupid I’ve lost count.

Now we have ‘Birmingham-gate’, where the council of Europe’s largest municipal region is officially ‘bankrupt’. No-one really cares, but its a welcome addition to the ‘Britain’s broken’ debate.

So fuck off, Starmer, there is NOTHING wrong with Britain. It’s functioning perfectly. Like a well-oiled… like a well-oiled RAAC ceiling.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So we all have a bit of a giggle about Spain and its appalling standards of equalitiness because it’s fun to take the piss. Particularly as not many speak English properly so they’re not aware of all the insults and derisory comments being levelled at them. Si?

And then on Friday I happened to be speaking to a professor of Spanish History at Kings College and he told me interesting things, even though he wasn’t a football fan at all. Amazing that people who know so little about football can be seemingly quite knowledgable about other things. But he basically said that most of Spain’s ‘problems’ (ie of a social, societal nature) stem from the fact that they’ve never really gotten over Franco. Who died in 1975. But Franco was a dictator. The sort of person who generally occupies the right-hand end of the political spectrum. Not far along that spectrum from all those stupid American women who want to vote for Trump; the misogynist’s rapist. Because those on the far right like women ‘to know their place’. And it would appear that many of those who know it are the women. So whether this right winginess comes from the religious spectrum; the Taliban, Orthodox Jews, Hindus and certainly Christians, or from the political one, like Franco, they share an adherence to a particularly antiquated mindset about the roles of the genders. Of which, for their purposes, there only two.

And Spain suffered the horrible dictator from 1939 until his death 36 years later. And you don’t last that long because everyone hates you. He was supported by at least half of the population, who helped him overthrow the ‘republican’ government at the time. So there’s a lot of people in Spain reared with quite hard right wing attitudes. And from such a gender-polarised starting point comes sexism, misogyny and all the wonderful things which accompany them. Like feeling free to grab hold of the nearest woman and kiss her face.

I’m not saying that Luis Rubiales is a right-wing misogynist, nor that ‘society is to blame’ for his actions. I’m not even saying that half the world’s problems stem from adherence to extremist political or religious views. It just sounds a bit like I am.

Tottenham Hotspur have no fascist sympathies. But have moved on from being managed by the spawn of Italian and Portuguese dictator-lovers to now having a true republican Aussie freedom fighter at their helm. A man so dedicated to that freedom that he gives the players virtual autonomy on the pitch with just a few basic tactical rules to which they should adhere. Where possible. Only if they feel like it. And it’s working wonders. We’re playing more beautifully than any other team, possibly EVER!!! We’re winning games, scoring at will and are currently second in the league. Second, obviously, to Manchester City, but we’re a nice team. And they are managed… by… a SPANIARD!!!

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

In 1837, my ancestor, Shlomo-ben-Yaarnkel ha-Cohen, was walking the streets of Szypliszki and he was depressed. For most Jews depression is the default position, expressed with a big ‘oooyyyy’, but for Shlomo this was more defined. He was poor. Not just, like boat-person refugee poor, not like homeless-in-Britain poor, not even ‘how am I ever going to pay my energy bill’ poor. Shlomo had nothing. His family didn’t even possess a tv, they were so poor. Ok, so 1837 probably wasn’t a good year for tv anyway, but he wouldn’t have had one, even if they had been invented. Because he had no money. And no food. And a family at home. Who all prayed three times every single day to a God who apparently never came to visit their little shtetl in Poland. Probably got held up in Warsaw. Shlomo walked past a baker’s shop and the wonderful smell stopped him in his tracks. “But I have no money for bread!!!”, he thought, “and 14 hungry children at home with no food!!!” (contraceptives cost money in Poland and ‘go forth and multiply’ was a biblical imperative, even though basic addition and subtraction might dictate otherwise.) So this deeply religious, observant man, who’s morals came from that very bible itself, stole a loaf of bread from the store! O.H.G.!!!!! (that’s ‘oh His God’, because He was much stricter than My one).

And here I sit, just 17 generations later and now saddled with the immense weight of the guilt of his deed. How can I ever be forgiven? How can I repay? And should I just, like, give a tenner to every baker in Eastern Poland? Or just make one single payment to all of Poland of, say, 57 million quid?

Oh, but hang on, half my descendents were murdered in Polish pogroms later that century… hmmmm… I better work out a discount on the reparations I offer. And cousin (very distant) Avram had his house burnt to the ground in 1869 by drunken Cossacks, that’ll cost a few bob…

An ex-MP called Antoinette Sandbach has been ‘named’ on a list of ‘descendants from the slave trade’ and is demanding to ‘be removed from it’. And you have to ask ‘why?’ So she lives on a massive estate in Wales paid for with money associated with… the slave trade!!!! But ‘am I my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s keeper?’ Should the grandchildren of Nazis be imprisoned? Does the statute of limitations pass on through countless generations once the crimes reach a certain level of modern-day traction?

I’m not saying Antoinette should be proud of her ancestor or ’embrace her inner slaver’ but it happened. It can’t ‘un-happen’, so however you write your lists of ‘descendants’, and for the pathetically little they really represent, history is history. The slave trade was the most disgusting, terrible thing ever, but judging it by modern standards is unworthy and denying involvement is even worse.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Have you had the ‘red light debate’ at a dinner party in a middle-class suburb near you? It goes like this: “well I saw cyclists today and they went straight through A RED LIGHT!!!, on their bikes, as if the rules don’t apply to them!!!”. Then everyone agrees whilst sipping chilled rose, and they get back to discussing schools as they tuck in to their vegetarian lasagne and rocket with spinach and anything else green they can get. They probably all drive electric cars and have clean driveways.

And I agree(d) with them, totally. Its terrible that cyclists seem to ignore signals, do what they want, go as they please and, generally, do absolutely everything that cars can’t, won’t or are unable to do. “The police should arrest them and beat them with long poles, that’s what should be done, if they weren’t so busy sexually assaulting vulnerable witnesses…”

And then I joined the biker fraternity. With my ‘leccy bike’, because proper pedalling is, like… hard. And I sat obediently at every red light as the pedestrians strolled across, I waited patiently to adhere to every last whim of the highway code. I was a model cyclist. And that lasted to just past Belsize Park. And I changed. Morphed into my alter-ego. I became… THE CYCLE BASTARD FROM HELL!!!

I was sitting at a red light, watching the pedestrian lights in both directions counting down, but there were no pedestrians to count them. And I thought: ‘fuck it’ and on I went. And, like your first murder, or first shot of heroin, it felt great. And I wanted to do it again. So I did. And again. And again. I stopped and checked; no-one wants to meet a 40-ton lorry coming across the lights at 30 mph, and if its safe and clear, I go. Making sure that if there are red-light cameras, I turn up my middle finger as I go, just to say ‘I have no registration number, no license, no insurance and bollocks to the rules’. Not saying I’m proud of it, it is what it is.

Then I dismount and become the perfect, police, law-abiding citizen I’ve always been.

But I know ‘he’ is in there. Waiting for the ride home. Waiting to be unleashed on the traffic lights. The force is strong.

Happy Wednesday

A & TCBFH xxxx

There can surely be few pleasures in life greater than high pressure hosing your driveway. Its right up there with wetting the bed (first 2.3 minutes only), not falling off a ladder and watching Arsenal lose to… anyone. The satisfaction achieved as the stones just glisten brightly, the joy of being soaked to the point of near drowning by mucky, muddy, gritty spray, the sheer pleasure of not doing your monthly accounts which are just inside the house, I’m now deeply in love with my Karcher. Joey’s loved it since I bought it. And I bought it the day I returned my brother-in-law’s which I’d borrowed to do the job last time. I just had to have one. My own. A burning need.

Joey heard I was deploying it and came running round. I had to fight him off. ITS MY FUCKING TOY!!! GET’CHER OWNNN!!!! Lila had to have a go too. But in a more demure way. Joey hasn’t quite grasped ‘demure’ with the same enthusiasm he grasps tools which can wreak havoc. You have to laugh.

No. You actually HAVE to laugh. It’ll keep you alive. They ran tests, so we know its true. Half a dozen miserable fuckers and six giggling morons… Ok, bit more scientific than that. They actually tested people with coronary artery disease, made them laugh, twice a week (wtf?) and the others were ‘subjected’ at the same time to unfunny documentaries. And the ones watching re-runs of Frazier or Monty Python, ended up with a whopping 10% better heart than those boring bastards watching Attenboro moaning about the whales. The ‘improvements’ were measured in terms of blood oxygenation, which is what the heart does. But what if laughing actually does nothing, but watching boring tv REDUCES your heart’s capacity by 10%???!!!! Clogs it up! Makes you unconsciously ‘want to die’ from boredom and depression caused by the plight of the arctic sea lions??? Didn’t think of that, did they?

And as someone who takes absolutely everything very very seriously indeed, someone who would NEVER make light of any situation when you could be angry or miserable instead, I resent having to spend two whole… errrr… 2 whole times every week being amused to the point of laughter. Although watching Everton could do it.

Happy, jolly, hilarious, gut-busting Monday

A xxxx

If the answer to the question is “James Maddison”, then what is the question? (Those who lack the love of the game of football, a devotion to all things Premier League, an understanding of the intricacies of ‘the beautiful game’ and an unnatural obsession with small, furry animals, best look away now.)

For years we’ve watched Maddison play for Leicester and thought ‘yeah, too good to play for the Foxes’. Or, ‘he’s ok, that Maddison, decent player’. But that was because he was mired down in Vardie-land with a bunch of no-hopers and losers. Ok, they did actually win the league, possibly the single most amazing footballing achievement in my lifetime, but, as they said in Life of Brian, ‘what have they ever done after that?’

For all the plaudits about our Jamie, he has thus far amassed a grand total of 3 England caps. And yet… and yet…

And yet put him in a Spurs shirt, pull off the handcuffs, set him free and he becomes… what Joey would call a Superhero. 3 games, 3 man-of-the-match performances, one goal, 2 assists.

And yet… there’s so much more he brings to our game. We’ve had fab players before. We’ve had 10 seasons with the world’s top striker. Who often found himself ‘dropping back’ because we had no natural ‘provider’ for him and Sonny to feed off. They did it for themselves and at times to stunning effect. But every team needs a playmaker. That person who can change a game with one pass. Someone who sees the game in its entirety and knows how to break it open. Kevin de Bruyne does it. Luka Modric was our past master, Christian Eriksen his wonderful successor. And that’s what we’ve been missing. And that is the real ‘answer’.

And if I sound like I have a serious man-crush on the scrawny northerner, then I have. And in Ange Postecoglu we have a manager who not only brings out the very best of everyone’s talent, but is brave enough to give it a free reign on the pitch. Which may become known, tactically, as ‘enough rope to hang yourself’. But for now, its working fabulously. And it feels so good to be unleashed from miserable, ultra-conservative southern Eureopean ‘special ones’. Which has had the most wonderful, liberating effect on the rest of the team too. Our midfield is magnificent, and Rodrigo Bentancur is yet to return from injury. Ahhhhhh.

Oh, and Manchester City are top of the league now. Just FYI. And to remember that there are a few other teams out there at the moment.

Happy Monday

A xxxx