Andy's Glasses

I’ve been set upon, beaten up and left almost crippled. By a fucking cold. Its not covid, I checked. But its not a normal cold either. This is the worst man-cold ever to enter a body and leave it so devastated and debilitated that it couldn’t even drag itself to tai chi this morning. And I truly love my Saturday morning tai chi. But this morning, after a night of pain, suffering and nose-blowing, I simply couldn’t do it. After the ingestion of various ‘remedies’, (paracetamol in 7 different disguises) I managed to hurl myself round the tennis court, heroically and with my normal style (like a wounded, 3-legged cat, chasing its tail) and character (cheat at every opportunity).

All I’m really concerned about is that I’m fit for the coronation next weekend. My head feels so swollen with snot I’m worried about the crown fitting properly. And as it weighs about 35 kilos with all those diamonds and rubies and gold, I could end up with serious neck damage.

These flowers are nothing to do with the coronation. Possibly the only thing in London that can state that. But they do it every year in Embankment Gardens; they plant shit-loads of bulbs, randomly, as you can see, and hope for the best. Its a truly beautiful display of tulips and… errr… not tulips and… flowers that everyone stops to take photos of them. You just have to. Its an imperative, like sending picture of your penis to parliamentary researchers, its out of your control. Next week the main tulip beds will be in bloom and they are truly spectacular. You won’t be able to move for Lithuanian tourists, Bulgarian refugees, Japanese selfie-stickers and Albanian pick-pockets.

Have you seen Daisy Jones and the Six yet? The Amazon Prime series of the fantastic book which coincidentally has the same title. Loosely based on Fleetwood Mac, its the tale of a fictional rock band, back in the day. Sex, drugs and rock-n-more drugs. Totally brilliant. Go start it NOW. You’ll thank me. Which won’t help my cold but is appreciated anyway.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

‘There’s everything to play for’, as the much over-used footballing expression goes. So overused in football-land, where pundits roam as a protected species, that only possibly ‘at da enna da day’ exceeds it as an exercise in wasted words and cliché. Even when Spurs were 6-1 down on Sunday, there was arguably ‘everything to play for’. Not victory, that became unviable 50 minutes beforehand. But perhaps pride? Respect? A duty to the fans? Even practicing for the next match.

Daniel Levy has offered Spurs traveling fans a full refund on their tickets for Sunday’s match. He sacked the manager who was in charge, but the fans still hate Daniel. So throw some cash at them. That’ll stop the inevitable protests and calls for his death, when the fans gather on Thursday night. Buy their support for 25 quid. (Away tickets are always cheap. Next season at Fulham they’ll probably charge 25 quid for the stewards to show fans to their seats.) But its a gesture. A realisation, not that Daniel wouldn’t have known beforehand, that the fans exist, they breathe and they ARE his football club. And they desperately wanted Mauricio Pochettino back in charge, but he’s going to Chelsea. We’ll have to take Sam Allardyce and be grateful.

But its the sharp end of the season. We dropped from 5th to 6th in the table last night when Villa won. If Liverpool beat West Ham tonight it’ll be 7th. Not disgraceful but so far below expectations and aspirations that it actually gives me irritable brain syndrome.

Yet tonight I cannot but be drawn to events at the (normally-)hateful Etihad stadium. For that rarest of spectacles: a title fight. It isn’t mathematically, but as you’re useless at maths (according to Rishi Sunak), who cares about that. This is the nearest to a ‘winner takes all’ as you’re going to get. So all us Man City fans are gearing up, getting the beers in and practising speaking really badly and northern for the event.

Because that’s what my season has become. I’m not proud, it is what it is.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I can put it off no longer. You can bury your head in the sand for so long, then your ears get blocked and you end up with conjunctivitis. So I shall just say it: My football team is shit. And its all just… gone! And there is nothing to live for.

Yet we could all just take Sunday’s abject humiliation at St James’s Park as ‘a sign’. As a marker. As the lowest point you can reach. A wake-up call. To Daniel Levy, our long-standing and seemingly silent-but-deadly Chairman. That he needs, at this point in OUR lives, to GET OFF HIS FUCKING ARSE AND DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE!!!! Because one feels that the mere appointment of (another fucking) new manager is unlikely, on its own, to cure our deep and enduring malaise.

We start each season with such promise of riches, such enthusiasm, such… hope. And for a while it seems warranted. It seems like ‘this could be the one’. A bit like we start most games. Not Sunday’s obviously. Sunday’s start made a shit-storm seem like somewhere you’d want be. An attractive proposition considering the alternative. I spent those first 20 match-minutes standing in the Suffolk rain trying to download an app at a Shell station to fill the car with electricity, all in vain as neither the app, the charger or both seemed to work. It was only later, as the scores came thick’n’fast, that I realised what a total privilege it was to have been out there getting soaked taking photos of QR codes in Woodbridge.

So what happens? We sack the caretaker manager. And get in the caretaker’s caretaker. Who, really, considering Ryan Mason’s efforts last time he stood in, should have worn the ‘first caretaker’s’ sweater from the moment Conte left.

Pochettino is going to Chelsea. Which is a shame, because he is much loved down the Lane. Nagelsman is not prepared to join any club until they’re actually on the pedestal receiving their next trophy, and then he’ll want 25 mil a year for getting them there. Louis Enrique talks seem to have… not really started. So that leaves Vincent Kompany. Who hasn’t told anyone he wants to be anywhere other than Burnley, but he seems like he might be good so he’s on loads of wish-lists. As a ‘new’ manager, his stock is as high as it can be. Would he want to come to ‘toxic’ Spurs, as we seem to be? Not sure I would.

I remain,

In a state of constant depression,

A xxxx

So ‘on the way home’ from Eastest of East Suffolk, we went to Bury St Edmunds. What is referred to as ‘the jewel in the crown of Suffolk, which it really is, for 2 good reasons. Firstly that it is really old, beautiful and delightful city, and secondly because it has very little competition for the title in what we saw of Suffolk. People from outside of that fair county might use the term ‘the jewel in the dung-heap’ but that would be a bit harsh.

And in St Mary’s church, which sits right next to the Cathedral in a bit of Christian overkill, they have this magnificent, 15th century (I’m guessing, might have come from Homebase last weekend) window. Baby Jesus sitting in a Star of David. And I thought: that’s nice. Bit multicultural, the joining of Jesus’s early and later years, a cross-denominational bringing together in harmony. Or, possibly, to celebrate Bury’s finest moment. In 1190, inspired by the massacre of Jews in York, Bury St Edmonds townsfolk slaughtered 57 of their own ‘chosen people’.

This was in fact news to me whilst reading up on the City. And would certainly have been news to Diane Abbott. Because she’s never read a history book in her life. Other than Mao Tse Tung’s little red book, and that’s not really history, more, ‘the future!!!’, if your future is hell and death and totalitarianism.

Diane stated in a letter to the Observer, that ‘Jews, Irish and traveler people don’t know about racism like black people do’. So she obviously hasn’t read the Wikipedia page on Bury St Edmunds or York. Nor heard of Hitler.

For Kier Starmer, having sat next to Jeremy Corbyn throughout all his years of endless antisemitism, Diane had crossed the thick red line the Labour leader has constructed since his promotion. So he immediately ditched her from the party.

She apologised and said that ‘they publish the first draft by mistake, oops’.

In her defence I’d just like to say that I don’t think Diane Abbott is an antisemite, any more than all the other hard-lefties are. Nor do I think she wrote a ‘final copy’ or even a ‘second draft’. As she has proved many many times over the past few years, Diane Abbott is just a total fucking moron who speaks without ever thinking and spews out nonsensical garbage at every opportunity to the embarrassment of all in her party. I really think it is indeed time to ‘let her go’. Look into the light, Diane, look into the light…

Happy Monday

A xxxx

We decided to find the place in the whole of England which has, on this weekend, the worst weather. Its called Suffolk. And its very nice, a bit agricultural, very pretty, full of quaint little towns which, to fully appreciate, you actually have to get out of the car. But only for a minute, then it’s done, tick it off, move on. Not like the weather. This photo was taken this morning on Aldeburgh beach, which is really lovely, especially if you like stones, like Joey does. If you come here to go on the beach, best to wait about 50,000 years, by which time it’ll be lovely soft sands. And then it started to rain. And hasn’t, at the time of writing this, some 8 hours later, stopped. But never mind, we had a JOB to do, whilst holidaying in East Anglia.

We had to ‘fill the car up’. Because Suffolk is lot of miles away from home and we couldn’t bring our charger with us, so we need some ‘lectric before we go home. How hard can that be?

We ‘popped’ into a Shell station which offered EV charging. Great. You need an app. Fuck. Never mind, got that, entered card details, plugged car in… nothing. App was not working. Uninstalled, re-installed, installed on Mel’s phone, begged the man there with a fistful of cash, still no power. Didn’t take more than about 40 minutes, most of it in the rain.

By which time, Spurs had kicked of at Newcastle and were already 3-0 down after 10 minutes. Life was getting better and better.

The car found another charging point and took us there. It looked like a wheelie bin but I plugged in anyway; ya never know. Turned out it WAS a wheelie bin and the car was (fucking) wrong. So we went to a Tesco. That had chargers but only slow, 8 hour ones. Yep, let’s sit in the car park of a closed Tesco for 8 hours.

By now Spurs were 5-nil down and quite frankly I’d have run the car off a cliff if they had any in inland Suffolk, but by quirk of fate, they don’t.

And having given up completely and decided to ‘do it on the way home’, we inadvertently bumped into a charging station. Not only were there chargers, they were very fast ones. AND, you didn’t need a fucking app! AAAAANNNNDDDD, you just literally plugged and paid, in a simple, easy, livin-the-dream kind’a way. We sat there next to a man sitting in his Tesla. Solitary business, charging.

So I’m not sayin its a pain having a ‘lectric vehicle. It can just be… challenging. The car scores a complete 10 out of 10. Our national support infrastructure; 0.00000037.

Happy Sunday.

A xxxx

They jailed 2 eco-warriors for 3 years. Their crime? Peaceful protest. In a nation which prides itself on its pillars of democracy, including freedom of speech and peaceful protest. The guys were members of ‘Just Stop Oil’ and nailed themselves to Battersea Bridge, or maybe superglued their buttocks to exit 23 on the M25 or something which was ‘disruptive’ but in no way violent. In fact they tied themselves to a bridge on a motorway which then had to be closed for 14 hours. And what is 14 hours in the face of advancing catastrophic climate change for the entire planet?

In that context, from my (very high) pedestal as an electric vehicle driver, concerned about every badger, every polar bear, every bit of coral and every carbon some Porsche is spewing out as I go silently and smugly by, in a fit of range anxiety, desperately looking for a plug, it is catastrophic.

The immediate irony is missed that stopping motorways results in an extra 14 hours of cars sitting around… emitting. But its the mental health of those drivers which is also worthy of consideration. Basically, people get seriously pissed off when their journeys are disrupted. And yes, there’s ambulances who can’t get to hospitals, and corpses inside funeral cars who get delayed getting to their final resting places, but for each of those, there’s 20,000 just normal people sitting there in frustration and anger.

And they’re not, at that moment, angry with the government. Nor with the gas-fired power stations, nor with the world’s seeming impotence about fossil fuel change. They don’t care, at that point, about ‘the cause’. They’re angry with the dickheads who’ve stopped the traffic. And thus will be far more predisposed against their alleged ‘causes’ than in its favour.

All demonstrations cause some disruption. Close roads round Westminster, block Trafalgar Square, and we get that. But inciting hatred against your cause, however noble that cause, is stupid. To ‘disrupt’ the Marathon would be so totally stupid and ludicrous that its really not worth even considering.

Rest in Peace Barry Humphries, funniest Australian ever.

A xxxx

What do we not like about Elon Musk?

He’s South African.
He’s richer than God.
He’s really rude, obnoxious and arrogant.
He sacked all those Twitters by email.
He dates loads of lovely women. Then marries them. Or really, he marries the same woman loads of times. Same difference.
He’s South African.

What do we like about Elon?

He’s the cleverest man possibly ever.
He’s richer than God.
He’s a true polymath.
He is funny. Very funny.

On some of his Tesla cars you select the ‘mode’ from sort of ‘eco’ to fast. And then he has “Ludicrous+” mode for maximum power. I like that. Call it what it is. And then yesterday. Ahhhh, yesterday. When his Space X company launched the most powerful space rocket ever to be launched from this solar system. I can’t speak for other galaxies. And it went up, but then it went wrong, so they destroyed it in mid flight to avoid it falling down and hitting someone on the head. But they don’t say it was ‘aborted’, or destroyed, or blown up. Not Elon. He calls it a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. RUD. And I love that.

And I love that whilst everyone in the world is shouting ‘disaster’, Elon’s congratulating the team on the bit that went right. Even though, in Earth-time, it wasn’t a very long bit. But heh, little by little. Baby steps. Even though each ‘step’ probably costs around $100 million. That’s my estimation. Elon won’t tell. But I mean, build a space rocket, cos you can’t exactly get one ‘ready-made’, get a launch pad, employ at least 1000 people even if all they do is sit in front of computers screens clapping the lift-off.

Elon is the chief designer at Space X. Because he’s so far ‘along the spectrum’ that no-one would argue with him. And the man is definitely a genius. In the true, Michaelangelo sense of the word, rather than the Ngolo Kante meaning. He built Tesla, having made a ‘few bob’ at Paypal. Then he made a vacuum tube through which carriages can be projected at incredible speeds. He never built a real on, only prototypes. But they work and he gave the specifications to ‘the world’. For nothing. Because he ‘didn’t need the money’. Though that may have changed since he pissed away a chunk of his wealth on a Twitter he didn’t really want.

So ‘we’ have a love-hate relationship with Elon.

I’m sure he’s really bothered about that.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

We need to talk about Scotland. I’ve avoided it out of my love for that amazingly beautiful nation, the total majesty of which I toast every night with a symbolic sampling of its finest product.

But when the former First Minister’s husband gets arrested, their house gets impounded and the caterers set up a marquee on the front lawn to feed all the police, then the Treasurer of the leading political party gets arrested too, gets freed and promptly resigns… (pause for breath), its time to take a look.

Obviously not an impartial look, because I’m English. And a separatist. Don’t know if there are any others only too pleased to get rid of ‘that bit above the wall’ which Mel Gibson invented for a movie and it became ‘independent’. Then we bought it back and we’re still paying. Its about as ‘independent’ as Joey.

Nicola Sturgeon resigned as first minister because ‘she’d taken the Scottish Nationalists as far as she could’. By my reckoning that was ‘to hell and back’. Two weeks later her husband is arrested. He was the chairman of the SNP. Because the party had raised 650,000 pounds for the next election, and 18 months later, with no election in between, they’re down to 90 grand. Three months later Hubby ‘loans’ the party 100k so they don’t go bankrupt. The police took away ‘the Sturgeon’s’ brand new mobile home. But that didn’t cost 600 grand.

So where did the money go? Did they buy Erling Haaland for 2 weeks? I did’t notice and I would have, because in Scotland he’d have scored 30 goals in that fortnight.

No-one’s saying La Sturgeon has done anything wrong. Nor her husband, nor the former treasurer of their party. But take my word for it; once you get a marquee on your front lawn with ‘Police’ written on it, its way more than a ‘casual inquiry’.

Is there smoke without fire? I make no judgments. But might imply loads.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I embrace ‘new technology’. Normally, once it has had a chance to ‘mature’ a little and become fairly ‘old technology’. I’m scared of new shit, basically. Find it opaque, hostile and nasty. I was the last person in the world to use an app in any meaningful way. I only downloaded WhatsApp because of pressure and demands. Of course, once I overcome my seemingly endless ‘good reasons’ NOT to embrace some new feature or piece of kit and join the club, I become evangelical about it, in quite a smug way, obviously.

Now, of course, I have apps absolutely everywhere. I want one on the toilet, crAPP, or in the sandwich bar, bAPP, possibly wrAPP if I’m feeling exotic. I even have one for Mel; slAPP. Or my favourite: nAPP. And I have everything a state-of-the-art dude should have from Ring doorbell to (fucking) Alexa, to pads, pods, smart-shoes, everything.

I also have a sound bar. For the tv. I’ve had it ages. But was frightened to use it. Because… because its new. New-ish. I acquired it in a deal with a friend who was moving onto a boat and had to leave his vast and overkilled collection of massive TVs and accompanying paraphernalia behind. So I got an incredible tv and a sound bar in exchange for an incredible pair of spectacles.

TV was easy, off with the old, on with the new. After removing all the artwork from the wall as well, obviously, its a big tv. Moved the window away. So then, the other day, I remembered the sound bar (about 6 months later), dusted it off, plugged it in, battled with the instructions, phoned my brother (software engineer), and… it worked. Sorry, IT WORKED!!! Its loud. Wonderfully so. I finally had ‘volume 11’ which I’ve sought my whole life.

Then I found the sub-woofer which accompanied it. That was even easier, just plug it in and bluetooth does the rest. The little light turned to green and so I called up This Girl is on Fire (why would anyone ever listen to any other song?) and checked it out. It was brilliant. Rich. Then the drums and bass kicked in. The windows broke. Sofa fell apart. Tiles dropping from the roof. Perfect.

I love technology.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Rishi Sunak wants every adult to be ‘numerate’. To have maths skills. And I completely agree. But to what level does he wish us to achieve? Addin’? Minus-in’? Multiplyin’??? Diviiiiidin’??? That’s really hard shit. I get that if you want to be a decent darts player you need both adding AND subtraction skills to a fast and proficient level. But what, precisely, does he want us to know?

There’s basic numeracy, there’s the ‘easy’ stuff; trigonometry, geometry, algebra, ‘sets’, graphs. But they flummox a lot of people. Its only nerds like me who really love all that. Integral calculus, chaos theory, fractals, relativity, quantum physics, 4-dimensional hyperspace, where does it fucking end?

I was good at maths. Until I met… statistics!!! Which was from another planet, mentally speaking. I just… couldn’t. It was only when they invented Sky tv that, like every other football fan in the country, I became a statistician. Because our national game had become, and still is, obsessed with ‘statistics’. How far Roy Keane ran in any match before he killed someone. The percentage of Spurs passes which went to the opposing team (87%). Useful stuff. Essential.

But that’s not real statistics. Its not probabilities and analytical test models and chai-squareds and non-parametric t-testing and stuff. If I was a gambler I’d have been better at probabilities. Or broke. But alas, that was the one addiction/obsession that I missed out on.

So does Rishi want us to do easy things, like proving Fermat’s last theorem (still never done, ever, by anyone, whatever the book said), or become so numerate that we can attempt the completely impossible, like working out whether paying 27p per Kw/Hour for our electricity with a standing charge of 35p per day is going to be better value than paying 24p per Kw/hr and a 43p standing charge. Or what are the cost benefits of not declaring your wife’s business interests in laws you’re pushing through parliament. I think he needs to clarify.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx