Andy's Glasses

The beach road in Hertzliya is half a cliff up from the beach. So 10 years ago they put in a super lift to take the unfit, the aged, infirm, those with buggies and bikes, and the downright fucking lazy, down to beach level. But they also put a stairway in, which the superfit, like us, and those who always use stairs out of sheer guilt over what we’ve eaten, or for justification of what we’re about to eat, always take. But over here they don’t just take the stairs to the bottom. They then turn around and go back up. Then turn around and go down again. And again, and again. There’s so many people using the precisely 100 steps (we’ve counted them) in rinse-and-repeat mode that there’s precious room for those just, kind’a ‘going to the beach’. In fact, using the stairs just to, kind of, ‘get up or down’, is positively frowned upon by those who lack their own step machine. This is like 50 Stairmasters broke down and fitted together in ever upward configuration. Or, errr, downward, if you… like, er, turn round.

You can have a ‘full English’ breakfast, particularly in England, oddly, though pretty much everywhere else. Except a kosher hotel in Hertzliya. And, partial as I am to the breakfast which kills you with regular consumption, I also have a lot of time for an ‘Israeli breakfast’. For those who’ve never been to Israel, its just lunch, served early. But a fabulous lunch using that famous ‘Mediterranean style’ of food which, if consumed regularly, will make you live forever. Ever seen a dead Mediterranean? No, me neither. There ya go then.

Mel heads for the yoghurt, nuts, fruit and cereals. I don’t. I head for the lunch counter. Salads, tuna mayo, smoked mackerel, pickled herrings, amazing breads, hummus, chillies, cheeses, eggs, obviously, and all manner of wonderful things not normally found at breakfast tables elsewhere. But because its ‘Mediterranean’, there virtually no calories whatsoever. So few that you can take the lift down to the beach afterwards without guilt. Unless you then get an iced coffee. That’ll cost you 12 ups and downs at least.

Happy days (they’re all the same here)

A xxxx

Well, the day that ended with Manchester City winning the most coveted thing in proper (ie European) football; the ‘treble’, started not quite as well when 5am passed and the taxi coming to whisk us to Heathrow hadn’t shown up. They normally arrive ten minutes early and you either hear them outside or get the phone call from the driver just as you get out of the shower. Not this time. By 5.05 I’d called the office twice and left messages. By 5.08 the Uber contingency plan turned up and whisked us away. They called me at about 5.15 to apologise. I in turn was going to apologise for leaving such abusive profane messages but thought, ‘no, bollocks, fuck ‘em’, instead. Great flight, bumpy landing, all smooth and slick, got the rental car, whizzed up to Hertzliya in record time because on Saturdays only half the fucking lunatic Mad-Max impersonators who constitute the driving population here, are on the road. The rest are praying. Thanking God. Thank God.

We went for a walk, ate ice creams, enjoying the fact that however fast you eat, the sun can melt them quicker over here and it gets messy. Strolled along the beach, then the fatigue started to set in. So we showered, changed and went back to a beach bar for a bite. This beach bar, in fact. Because they do ‘beach bar’ here so fabulously. Even better than in London. We got into bed by 10.30 here, which was 8.30 ‘match time’. Fab. Mel was so exited she stuck on her Lone Ranger mask and fell asleep. I magnanimously turned off the commentary. Which was in Italian anyway. And… I made it to half time and then, gone.

The fact is, the match was one you’d describe as ‘technically wonderful’. Which is a footballing euphemism for ‘boring as fuck’. It had its moments, but Kevin de Bruyne going off injured was tragic. He’s been playing for months with a torn hamstring. How good is he going to be when fully fit then?

However, (apparently) they won the match. Rodri hit the winner. My fave City player. Elegant, majestic, gifted yet ‘ard as nails. And they got the monkey off their back by finally winning the Champions League and yet… left another primate, kind’a hanging there a bit longer. Because this final, however technical, was nothing like Man United’s one in 1999. When they scored two goals in the last 4 minutes of the game to win.

In fact, this ‘treble’ has had a feeling of complete inevitability since Arsenal withdrew from the league competition. When Man United won nothing was guaranteed. They had a fantastic team of guys who were playing beyond any levels they’d played before. City’s team were all bought because they live permanently ‘at that level’. But maybe that’s just the thoughts of old man missing the simplicity and honesty of the game in the past.

And yet it was so inevitable that the City owner, Sheikh Mansoor, actually turned up. The second time, in thirteen fucking years, that he has bothered to watch them live. Even though you can always get cheap flights from Abu Dhabi on EasyJet to Manchester if you want to, and it would only cost him an extra 22 quid for ‘speedy boarding’.

Ok, I really must go. I have work to do. Lying in the sun, paddling in the sea and eating wonderful food.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I first went to Israel in July, 1976. The ‘kibbutz experience’ was by miles the cheapest way to ‘travel’, ‘stay away from home f’ra bit’ and ‘holiday’. Even though you work 6 days a week, so its not, like, Club Med, and the rooms are less ‘The Savoy’ and more ‘Stalag 14’, but that’s all part of the ‘sperience, innit’. And when you’re just 20, you barely notice things like discomfort, hard labour and cockroaches. Me and me mate, Steve, stayed a couple of months. It was simply brilliant. Independence, a world filled with young, fit and open-minded people, and at every bus stop you passed there was Gal Gadot in a khaki mini-skirt with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Possibly two of them.

We arrived 2 days after the ‘Raid on Entebbe’, when Israeli commandos flew to Uganda to rescue a hi-jacked flight, did a lot of shooting, were more heroic than Bruce Willis ever dreamed of, saved all the people and brought them safe. The only loss was Jonathan Netanyahu, the leader of the commandos and big brother to Binyamin who was also there. Two guys from our kibbutz ‘came home’ too, the day after we arrived. Having been whisked away silently, 5 nights previously. They said nothing, made no comment, asked for no praise. Cooler than Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. But taller.

And then it happened. My mate Paul, a Californian with whom I collected eggs every morning from about 10,000 chickens who really didn’t want to give up their eggs, called for me in the afternoon. Work starts at 6-ish so you’re done by 2. We hitched a ride across the fields on a tractor, and from the road took the bus into the bustling metropolis which Kyriat Gat really wasn’t. It was just a really small desert town. Paul didn’t tell me why we’d gone there. And it was actually the bus terminal we sought. Because there was the path to heaven. Though this comes in many guises, as the holy all know. This particular route was via a pitta bread stuffed with felafel, hummus, chilli and other magic which I’d never experienced before.

If that little ‘take-away’ experience made me actually question the very fabric of my atheism, then our next trip, all the way into Beersheba for shawarma, sent me into the welcoming arms of the devil herself (you really think a man could ever be that evil??) forevermore. Because heaven is what drips down your arms. In the promised land.

Which is why I’ve just arrived back in Tel Aviv. Where spirituality comes wrapped in flat-bread and drips.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We love a Sheikh, us football fans. Can’t get enough. Man City have got one, and you can’t get more successful than them. Newcastle have got one and look how brilliantly they’ve improved since his arrival! And now Man United might get their own. I never knew there were so many Sheikhs in the world.

Obviously, you don’t want a poor one. And why would you? When so many apparently have more gold than Midas. (The legendary king, not the exhaust pipe centres).

Man City’s is from Abu Dhabi. In fact, its probably safe to say that Sheikh Mansoor IS Abu Dhabi. Newcastle’s is from Saudi Arabia but only ‘represents the state’ when it absolutely suits him to and he can gain an advantage from that status. Otherwise he remains ‘completely independent from it’. For tax purposes.

And the man bidding for Manchester United is from Qatar. His family is worth 275 billion. Don’t know if that’s pounds or dollars but does it make any difference? Its the zeroes that count. And I must confess to not personally knowing Sheikh Jassim, I’m sure he’s a lovely man. And perhaps, unlike the others so titled, he may be honourable, honest and totally transparent in his financial dealings within the football world.

He’s promised, in what is claimed as his ‘5th and final bid to buy United’, to settle their debt. And because the club has been (mis-)managed for the last 18 years by the horrendous Glazer family, that debt is now so close to a billion quid that any change would barely buy you a superyacht. But that is the Glazer’s business model. Buy a sports team with money borrowed by the team, rake off ‘profits’ every year then sell the club for an immense profit without settling the initial debt, which remains with the club. How that is legal I really don’t understand, but its what they do.

Sheikhs don’t do that. They don’t need to. The word ‘debt’ does not exist in Sheikh-language.

Spurs didn’t get a Sheikh, we got an Aussie. And West Ham won a European cup last night, once again showing that fans don’t have to be in any way ‘nice’ or even ‘decent’ to enjoy footballing success.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This is the answer to my dreams! And of course, it took Apple to realise precisely what I didn’t need, what I’ve never needed, never wanted, and yet make me see the rest of my life in new and different terms, dependent on their design team. Because now, I’ll be liberated from walking down the street staring at my phone. I’ll get my left arm back. And, in time, my neck will straighten up properly after all those years of ‘head down’ gazing. I can walk upright in Oxford Street!! So no more bumps and bruises from walking into Lithuanian shoppers, Swedish half-termers, French study groups and Bosnian pick-pockets (no right minded English person EVER goes down Oxford Street) as I amble along with eyes on my phone and headphones on, hitting lampposts, traffic wardens and other tossers staring at their phones who aren’t looking where they’re going either. The headphones protect me from Electric Vehicles which make no noise, so they told me in the Bose shop.

Anyway: that’s all done with!!! I’m going VR, possibly permanently, and I don’t know when I’ll be back in ‘your world’, because frankly, my new one will be much better. Because these goggles may look to you’re totally fucking moronic if you’re not on a piste, but that’s because of your ignorance. They’re not just about playing stupid games, leaping around the lounge as if being attacked by a swarm of killer zombie bees, these goggles are YOUR LIFE!!! Emails come up, all selected by just looking at the correct, heads-up, icon. It tracks your eye movements. Ok, bit of a problem if you’re driving round Hyde Park Corner, but other drivers will understand that something superior is happening in your vehicle. You’re changing lanes because your daughter just sent you a picture of her brunch. You reply to emails with your voice. Keyboards are sooooo 2023, dahling. And its going to be the absolute next best thing.

This also solves the ‘AI problem’ because we’ll all become robots and you won’t be able to tell the difference, other than the humans will be wearing goggles which make them look like robots and the real robots won’t. They’re fully integrated. And we shall ‘interface’ with them. But with all heads upright!

The future’s bright, its… whatever you want it to look like, for 2 hours til the batteries run out.

A xxxx

This is what’s now known as ‘the Harry Kane question’. Should he stay at Spurs for the lurve or move somewhere else for success. Somewhere like… Manchester United!!! You simply can’t get ‘bigger’ than that But… but… if he’s moving ‘to win things’, which all the world’s media feel he should, if nothing else, to give them something to write about and speculate upon, then can Man U. guarantee silverware? Like really? He can lose cup finals at Spurs. The Mancs have won nothing in ages. Ok, not quite as much ‘nothing’ as Spurs and slightly less ‘ages’. But people tend to forget the barren years, when there was no Matt Busby, no Alex Ferguson, and Man U. were pretty average for long periods of time. Times like… right now.

Or he could go to possibly the only team in the world who are as big/bigger than Man U; Real Madrid. They love an old striker in Madrid but their current one is leaving to go chase the oil money in Saudi (I haven’t read his contract because I lost track of all the zeros), so now they want Harry too. A bidding war will ensue. And Real will win because they’re quite happy to bankrupt the entire city of Madrid to buy a player, they have done that so many times before. Financial Fair Play rules are suspended as you approach the Spanish capital. As they are in certain parts of Manchester and around Paris. Newcastle have now requested a suspension too.

But I don’t care! Because we’re actually talking to a manager! With a view to ‘buying him’!! Though you don’t get an Amazon returns policy with managers. Nothing’s certain yet but talks have begun with Ange Postecoglou. Oh. He’s the manager of Celtic. They’re a football club somewhere up north in the third world. He’s an Aussie. Which sounds a bit ‘Ted Lasso’ but wait; he’s a great manager. He took Celtic, 6 years ago, from a team who always win every single trophy that Scotland can bash out of zinc, every single year, brushing aside all who come before them, and turned them into a winning team! And that’s not easy. Ok, it may seem easy because other than Rangers, there is simply no competition north of the border to Celtic’s yearly ‘parade’, which they call ‘the league’. But heh, beggars can’t be choosers and with the transfer window coming and no manager and no director of football, Spurs aren’t looking too clever.

So I’m hoping for Ange. Because there is literally no-one else on the planet prepared to even talk about taking a job widely regarded as ‘toxic’.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What does summer mean to you? Cricket at Lords? Tennis without an umbrella? Top down on the car? Shorts’n’t-shirts? Liberation from football woes?

Or ice cream?

I wear shorts all year, because I’m a bit daft, play tennis in any weather and actually prefer it when its not too hot and similarly will always drive any convertible with the top down unless its pouring… or snowing. But ice cream? That remains a defining feature of ‘the summer’. Once we’re allowed to actually have a summer. Since Brexit ruined the weather AS WELL!!!

So on Thursday, when we for once had both kids all day as Lila was expelled from school. Ok, it was half term, but really its only a matter of time. And they wanted to go to ‘the ice cream farm’. Because we’ve been before. And it was a farm, at some stage in its long-ago, because they have broken old tractors for the kids to play on, and bales of hay for them to jump on. But that’s it. Not a cow in sight. Nor a combine harvester. Just a shop, which sells ice cream. And that’s what Lila and Joey wanted. Ok, they jumped on the bales, played in the playground which is ok but probably not as good as the ones a 4 minute walk from home, but it was the ice cream, in lots of flavours, that they wanted. And were prepared to sit for 30 minutes each way in the car to get them. Was it worth the journey? Oh yeah. It really was. For all of us.

Today we had tickets for a play about dinosaurs at the local theatre. I booked it ages ago, then thought it might be good to take the kids too. What could be nicer on the sunniest, warmest, loveliest, most summeriest Sunday afternoon of the entire year, than sitting in a darkened, air-conditioned theatre with 300 kids screaming at a faux T-Rex? However, it must be said, as kids shows go, and we’ve suffe- endur- seen our share, this one was pretty bloody good. As you can see by this Triceratops. It was real. Alive. No, it really was. No idea how that happened but we’ve all seen Jurassic Park, right?

Then we went for ice cream. Which were also real. I love McDonalds ice cream. People tell you “its got more chicken fat in it than… than a chicken!!!”, or that “its made from petroleum byproducts and increases the world’s carbon levels” or any such bollocks. But I don’t care what they do nor how its made. It is simply wonderful ice cream. Lila and Joey agreed with me. Mel didn’t even get asked the question as she had a face full of McFlurry at the time of the survey.

Happy Summer Days

A xxxx

The government refuses to give up all its private WhatsApp messages to the inquiry into Boris’s Covid behaviour. The latest inquiry. Part 7: “The CRISIS!!!” In previous parts we’ve had partygate, Dominic-Cummings-gate and the garden gate, through which Boris goes out for his daily run. To prove every day, as he has for the past 12 years, that running in no way makes you fit, slim or toned. Just a fat fuck who bounces around for 5 miles across the park looking like a heart-attack waiting to happen.

Yet, much as Jesus famously said ‘let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone’, thus Boris’s whatsapps. If a court in any country in the world waded through a week’s worth of my very own messages, I’d be arrested, cancelled, unemployable and hailed as a sexist, racist, misogynist, homophobic, woman-phobic, trans-phobic, fatty-phobic, skinny-phobic and definitely vegan-phobic, and beaten up by supporters of Arsenal, Manchester City, Leeds, Everton and hopefully Chelsea. Would be a boring week if I wasn’t.

Does that make me a misogynistic, chauvinistic, smug, schaudenfreudist antichrist who is godless, friendless and hopeless? Or just a normal bloke who has mates with too much time on their hands and possibly a bit too little grey matter elsewhere.

But the fact is that Whatsapp is for the exchange of worthless, meaningless but preferably extremely amusing, nonsense. If I get a message ‘my dog’s got a bad leg, ahhhhh’, my response would inevitably be along the lines of ‘shoot him’. A court would view that statement as ‘incitement to murder’, any normal person would get that its just ‘banter’. I get loads of ‘stuff’ mocking the whole ‘trans’ argument. They in no way reflect any animosity or otherwise towards that sector of society but generally mock the quite ridiculous effect this has on our lives and even the words we can use in that context. I seldom ‘redact’ any messages. I wasn’t aware you could. Nor do I care.

And the problem with an inquiry looking into Boris’s messages, and everyone else’s is that they find it very difficult to sift the serious from the ‘taking the piss’. Its subtle. Nuanced. Highly contextual. So if Boris said “we should just let 150,000 old people die from Covid and that’ll save on care sector funds”, he probably didn’t mean it. I’d have meant it but he might have been mocking.

Boris has given his phone willingly to the inquiry. But that’s his ‘new phone’ and only started in May 2021 so is useless in any inquiry starting in March 2020. But Rishi is very opposed to giving over his and those of his colleagues. Which is why ‘we’ are in court sorting it out.

Assuming the inquiry does not have the power to actually bring any of the covid victims back to life: WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT???

Cup final today; train strike today; the perfect storm.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Apparently we (and I speak here for ALL of humanity) are facing extinction. Not the one that’s coming because of global warming, that’ll take some time. This one is from Artificial Intelligence. Its not mere conspiracy theorists spouting their normal bollocks either, this message comes from the 350 most eminent men in the AI field. Who are worried that ‘superintelligent AI with interests misaligned with humans’ might ‘unwittingly’ destroy us. Well how ‘superintelligent’ can you be if you do fairly major things ‘unwittingly’? I think their title needs to be downgraded to ‘daft’, ‘stupid’ or just merely ‘normal-intelligent’ AI.

So here’s my message to these 350 ‘superintelligent’ professors and pioneers and techno-whizzes all competing to advance AI to positively Terminatoresque limits in which the computers themselves program the next level of computers and the shit hits the fan. The message is ‘STOP’. Just fucking stop trying to out-brilliant each other by devising something even more brilliant. Even though Google/Apple/Meta will pay you 17 billion dollars for your efforts.

If you’re driving down a road which you know ends at a cliff edge, even if its an electric car, the sound advice would always be along the lines of ‘stop’. So what’s the fucking problem?

Buddhists aspired to a state in which you exist only in spirit form. You don’t need a human body, that’s just a machine for turning hamburgers into shit (Buddhism predates McDonalds by a thousand years). Similarly, the most advanced AI ‘machine’ is just a black box plugged into a socket. Yet really, for most people, AI can only be appreciated once you stick it into a person-shape. And the most advanced robot in the world now confesses to ‘have the personality of a 15 year old boy or girl’. And that’s how ‘intelligent’ artificial intelligence is. To avoid any gender/identity issues, Robot-thing is truly ‘they/theirs’. Possibly ‘it/its’, but certainly not ‘tits’. And because it doesn’t possess an artificial penis, it can go into any toilet in the world without invading anyone’s safe space. Although it wouldn’t do very much once it got there, obvs.

The future is here. Its just a matter of how long it lasts.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I just want to mention Philip Schofield, not cos I like him, dislike him, have ever watched him or give two shits for anything he says or does. I just want to mention him. Simply because in this whole ‘I’M QUITTING ITV, FREVVER!!!!’ irrelevant, ‘who cares’ bullshit currently dominating all the headlines, one thing struck me as a bit odd. Coming from Mr Nice Guy, Sweet-as-Pie, make that Mr Nice Gay, I’m still the wovverley, cudderwy wittle nonce I always was, whichever way my ship sails, the comment about his ‘affair’ as being ‘unwise but not illegal’ set alarm bells ringing. Well, my alarm bells. You could use such an expression in the context of a tax avoidance scheme, maybe, and possibly get away with it. Possibly parking in someone else’s driveway. But in relation to anything sexual it takes on a whole other narrative. Because when sex is involved, what’s illegal? Certainly not sex between men, that was legalised in 197-something, though soon to be banned in America if Desantis becomes president, and certainly not anything extra-marital because no one cares what 3rd rate celebs do in or out of their marriages. So to even raise the question of ‘legal’ or ‘not legal’, we must be talking about age. And then, the very next day, we learn that Smiley Phil actually met this ‘man’ when he was just 15. But the affair didn’t start til the kid- SORRY!!!!- not ‘kid’, obviously, but MAN, big MAN, was 18. And in the interim we can therefore assume there was no pressure, no promises, no insinuation of career prospects, as this boy/man worked with Schofield. No, if Phil says it was all kosher and Marquis of Queensbury rules, I’m happy with that.

I really wanted to talk about the last day of the football season. Spurs won!!!! How happy that made me. Oh, really? No, I’m been over this season since January. But then it was Leicester or Everton going down. Leicester are winning!, now they’re 2-0 up against West Ham, Everton will be going down!!! Now Everton have scored!!!! And its Leicester will go down unless… unless nothing. Leicester are down. I’ll miss them like I miss having a covid jab every 4 months. Not sure I’m thrilled about Everton staying up but I don’t get a vote. And so the season’s over, we have no manage, no director of football, all previously considered options have flown to pastures new and we’re left, once more, sifting through the also rans. I love football.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday

A xxxx