Andy's Glasses

If I was an American, from San Francisco, say, and a massive 49ers fan, but I then had to move to Boston for work/family/affair-with-a-Kennedy/whatever, I’d spend every Sunday thereafter as a fan of the Patriots. All the claret-and-gold shit, the caps, shirts, flags, would be ceremoniously or metaphorically burned and in would come the New England paraphernalia. Its logical (San Francisco is 3,000 miles away) and sensible and; why not?

If a Spurs fan moved to Newcastle, he’d still be a Spurs fan. He might even go watch Newcastle on occasion, but his heart would be 300 miles away in N17. If he moved to Paris, he’d be a Spurs fan. If he moved to fucking Sydney, he’d be a Spurs fan. Its no longer a geographical or convenience issue; its just what you are. I have friends in London who are season ticket holders at Old Trafford and Anfield. I have a mate in Sydney who gets up at 4 in the morning every week to watch Arsenal lose a 2-goal lead to whoever they play. I have another who’s lived in San Diego for decades but comes over to watch ‘important’ Spurs matches (so he doesn’t fly much).

Because football team support over here, probably in all of Europe, is more like affiliation to an army. Its a brotherhood of… probably fools, unless you happen to support Manchester City, for whom your support is unquestioning, undying, unyielding and forever. Its like a marriage with no possibility of divorce, EVER! Even if that relationship becomes controlling, toxic, abusive and destructive.

It is nonsensical, it is hurtful and it is painful. So why do we do it? Why be an Arsenal fan, or a Chelsea fan, or an Everton fan and endure all that discomfort? Or a Spurs fan, possibly the worst because every match, every season, every cup, starts with so much promise and then… and then… and then…

But booing Davinson Sanchez off the pitch on Saturday was a bit much, even amid the immense frustration Spurs fans were feeling at the time. He’s not our best player, never has been, not one to fill anyone with confidence. But that was just cruel. Venting the collective agony onto one guy.

However, that was my ‘brothers’ so united we stand.

God help me.

A xxxx

So I was mowing my lawn, as ya do… well, as I do, you don’t cos you’re an old bourgeoise capitalist, probably Brexiteer, who wouldn’t get his hands dirty. Well I love dirty hands. Always have. Anyway, as I was filling up the mower I thought: I now spend more money on petrol for the mower than in the car. Cos if I put any in the new car, its a big mistake. And the old car doesn’t get used a helluva lot. For ecological, holier-than-thou reasons. It is no longer smug enough for me to drive.

I used to be a petrolhead. So what am I now? A battery head? I like to think I’m an airhead but to be honest, the air quality is so awful due to fuel emissions which YOU produce, that the air is currently unworthy. I really think its time that Sadiq Kahn’s wonderful Ultra Low Emission Zone be extended beyond the M25, up to Hadrian’s Wall. And those poor northerners who really can’t afford to be changing their cars will understand, in the approach to the next election, just what the Labour Party can really do for them. I wish to share our Mayor with the whole country. As I’m not allowed to drown him.

I would feel guilty about all my carbons whilst cutting the grass but it is completely mitigated by the guilt about waking all the neighbours from their afternoon naps. Electric mowers just lack the noise, as well as the potency of a good ole little 4-stroke.

Speaking to a Liverpool fan this morning, I briefly alluded to ‘football’ (from the depths of my team-induced misery and depression). And this saintly woman replied (from the depths of her very own team-induced misery and depression), “football? There is no football, not til next season”.

Yessss, I thought, the ostrich principle; bury your head in the sand until its safe to come up. Next season, that’s what its all about. Currently, there is NO football, so no need to comment. Report. Cry. Slit wrists. Nuffink.

Very happy Sunday

A xxxx

We’re going out looking for life. Its out there somewhere. Not here, on Earth, that’s all doom and depression and gloom and Arsenal top of the league. We’re looking for life… elsewhere!!! To be precise, on the moons of Jupiter. Well, why not? Gotta start somewhere. So we are going, and that’s proper, European ‘we’, even though it ‘got done’ and everything, we’re still included, on geographical grounds, plus we gave all those foreigners 1.4 billion quid of MY hard-earned tax money to pay for the trip. And what a trip.

The rocket took off yesterday, in French!!! …trios, deux, un… bang! Never heard a countdown in French before, quite disconcerting. Thought all the French speakers were on strike and rioting or retiring early before Macron can change the age. Anyway, it took off, that’s the first worry over. Big rocket. Not electric, I’m guessing. By the amazing amount of smoke, steam, emissions and pollution coming out from the back of it. Even though there’s no Americans involved in it at all.

When it gets above the atmosphere it’ll drop its space probe called ‘Juice’ (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) which is quite a neat little thing, other than the two massive ‘sails’ on either side, each about 10 metres across which are solar panels, otherwise how’s it gonna get there? Refuel? Plug it in on Venus, FFS? And then it will travel 6.6 billion kilometres in the next eight years!!! In fact, thinking about it, it doesn’t need ‘propulsion’ once its moving; there’s no friction to slow it down, its a perfect vacuum so it’ll just go. For just eight years, which I worked out is an average speed of 94,000 kilometres per hour. Which it can only achieve because there’s no speed cameras in outer space.

The power supply is for the electronic gadgetry, cameras, imagery and controls and stuff which may be rather useful otherwise it’ll get lost in space, which is no good to anyone.

It will visit 3 of Jupiter’s moons, all of which contain water, so may possibly hold ‘life’. We’re not talking little green men, nor women, not even, like, a few cows, or fishes, but just bacteria. The stuff we avoid here ‘like the plague’ (plagues are defined as ‘bacterial in nature’, in case you didn’t know), so we fly 6 billion miles to find it on Jupiter. Hope they have hand sanitiser on board.

And its so exiting, the next eight years will have us… well, not much really, not til we get there.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We went to Northampton yesterday. As ya do. Well, there’s an amazing play centre there, the likes of which don’t exist down in high rent land as you need acres of space for laser-quest and dodgem cars for kids and climbing walls and indoor mini-golf and all the other wonders that little kids lurve. We didn’t take the kids, just fancied it. Ok, we did. But Northampton? Well, that’s ‘an hour’ away. As long as… obviously, when the M1 is concerned. Its 55 miles. But really, that depends on what you consider ‘a mile’. Because accounts may vary.

There’s old-fashioned miles, like those we’ve driven for decades using those old-fashioned petrol cars. Remember petrol? Amazing to think we used to go TO a special place where you could stand there high as a kite from fumes, for 6 minutes pumping tree-killing, planet-destroying, animal-threatening hydrocarbon-emitting fossil fuels into the car, then, like paying for it? But really paying. Ahhhh, those were the days…

Because along with ‘superior’ methods of propulsion, we’ve also managed to create a new ‘mile’ to go along with it. A more… ‘variable’ mile. A lot shorter. The actual shortness of which possibly depends on how cold it is outside, how loudly you play the stereo and how many times Joey opens and closes his window.. It all gets rather complex.

I ‘filled up the car’ on Wednesday night so when we left home its stated range was ‘325 miles’ with 100% charge. Wow. So many volts I barely knew what to do with them all. So off we went. Had a totally brilliant morning (couldn’t afford the afternoon as well; but seriously), then out for lunch. To McDonalds. Because Mel & I love Maccy Ds. And never allow ourselves to eat it. Except when we have a viable excuse. So although Joey was yelling for fresh vegatables, Lila screaming to go the ‘Vegan Curse’ restaurant next door, we dragged them in to McDonalds. Had to park the car round the corner because McDonalds don’t allow drivers of electric cars inside. Obviously. Then, happy with our lunch (me) and our ‘happy meal’ toys (Mel) we came home.

And the car showed our remaining range of 105 miles. We’d driven 220 ‘new’ miles on a 110 ‘old’ mile trip. I think, if they’re encouraging electric vehicle usage, they need to redo the distance signs on the motorways. Something like this:

LEEDS 175 MILES
IN AN EV 295 MILES
HEATER ON 325 MILES
JOEY FUCKING ABOUT WITH WINDOWS 365 MILES

Just for clarity and simplicity.

Happy travels

A xxxx

So here’s the question: do you want to be fat and fertile or slim and sterile? Its a big question. But may get less big if you opt for the latter. Because they’ve been examining the new ‘fasting diets’, where you don’t eat on Tuesday, or you only eat til 7 at night and then nothing til 2pm the next day, every day. Including Tuesday. Because they think that these fasting diets upset the body’s metabolism and reduce the energy required to produce healthy eggs and sperm. So young people have a choice. Do they stay fat as a blimp but with perfect sperm or eggs or do they slim down, possibly enhancing their chances of actually finding a ‘mate’, but with damaged reproductive stuff once they’ve found him/her/it/them/something?

It must be mentioned that this study was actually performed on Zebrafish. Which, I understand, may produce a mild ‘WTF???’ reaction, but apparently zebrafish have a ‘similar genetic structure’ to humans. Do they fucking really?. I wanna know how ‘similar’, bearing in mind we share a genetic structure with trees, plants, worms, slugs and aardvarks as well. Anyway, zebrafish it was, cruelly starved of food then subjected to the degradation of having their bits manipulated for testing. Don’t zebrafish have rights? If they’re almost human?? A trade union? Support group? The Royal Society for the Protection of Zebrafish or something?

But that’s what they found. Fat zebrafish are more eggy, more spermy, that thin, starving ones. Therefore, obviously, the same will apply to humans. Particularly those who only breathe underwater, or have stripes. The evidence is simply overwhelming.

One could almost be forgiven into naively thinking that any diet’s purpose is to intake less food and reduce weight so might possibly have a similar effect on fertility as these new, ‘fasting’ ones.

People looking for a mate should go to their local aquarium at the earliest opportunity or try the new dating app: FishFingR for a quick hook up. (Hooks to be removed immediately thereafter).

Happy dating

A xxxx

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, there was all manner of deprivation inherent in our post-war, baby-boom lives. Ok, we had sugar, all we wanted, so ‘sweets’ were hard currency back in that day. Also, soft currency, chewy currency and sherbet-flavoured currency. But if we liked a particular song, we had to either buy it (expensive), record it from a friend, once ‘cassettes’ had been invented, or wait for it to ‘come on the radio’. Which for a top 10 hit was easy, but for anything more… vintage, or an album track, you were in for the long haul waiting for that.

Being ever the visionary, I remember thinking: one day there should be a way of finding songs, which you don’t have to buy, perhaps pay for them by escaping from really annoying advert clips or something, and even see the video!!! I appreciate, for those historians among you, that the music ‘video’ didn’t arrive til about 15 years later, but I was brilliantly and precociously incisive.

So when YouTube came into my life, Mel’s life was thrown into a really noisy frenzy of 70s rock, 60s soul, 80s punk and anything else you could play really LOUDLY.

Music didn’t stop in 1989, but I did. Other than the odd Nirvana track, Whitney Houston, a bit of Eminem and the first two Oasis albums (and NO MORE!), nothing past then was deemed ‘good enough’. Until Taylor Swift came along, obviously. And Adele.

I’ve known about Alicia Keys for ages. Since she started, age 5 (so it seems) with her amazing voice and incredible song-writing talent. But by the usual circuitous route on Sunday I ended up in the 7 degrees of Alicia Keys. And I played ‘This girl is on Fire’. And I thought… its just brilliant. Then I played more. And more. And now she’s my favourite.

And that led to the next thought/realisation/question? Do I only love music when its played by truly beautiful people? As Alicia emphatically is. As Taylor Swift is. Even Kurt fucking Cobain was fairly gorgeous and pretty. David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Whitney, Stevie (aaaahhhhhh) Nicks.

No! Definitely not. I love those people because of their immense contribution to their genre and their almost immeasurable talent. But then a shock. I adored Olivia Newton John. No fucking talent, couldn’t sing for shit, didn’t know a crotchet from a pair of satin pants, but… Olivia… Newton… John… Who became more a ‘volume right down’ kind of singer in my world.

Do beautiful people sing better than ugly ones? Well, Olivia doesn’t, for sure. And does this make me shallow? Perverse? Superficial and trivialising??? Probably.

But who cares?

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Yesterday’s match between Liverpool and Arsenal really did ‘have it all’. It had football, not a big surprise, it had goals, it had Arsenal disappointment, and we all love that, it had on-field violence, and best of all, quite uniquely, it had off-field violence between a referee and a player. Oh, you think, that happens all the time, some overly-tattooed, steroided thug who earns 70 grand a week pushing around a poor, humble assistant ref. But this was different. The assistant ref elbowed Andy Robertson in the face. After the match. It was brilliant. The ref then realised what he’d done, pulled out a red card and showed it to himself. Ok, that’s what should have happened. But as no-one saw it and there were only 78 cameras on around Anfield, it was only a matter of time until it was ‘found’. Was it ‘intentional’? If someone’s grabbing you from behind, the natural ‘escape’ is to throw your elbows blindly about. But if he looked, took aim at the Scotsman’s chin and ‘fired!’, then its different. Possibly better.

I’m not one to play ‘the blame game’. Arsenal lost, having been a seemingly comfortable 2-nil up, because they lost the plot. But IF I was pointing any fingers… IF I was, then all ten would be in Granit Xhaka’s face. We’d all thought the Swiss person had overcome his famous temper, having been a model of restraint and gentleman-ness for a year or so. But then… then… a horrible tackle on Trent A-A resulted in a fracas and both received yellow cards.

But that event awoke the sleeping beast.

They crowd at Anfield had gone very quiet, as it appeared that their team were simply shit. In the Cop you could hear a zombie knife drop. But then suddenly, 50,000 Scousers all had a focus for their constant state of misery and entitlement-deprivation: Granit Xhaka! And there was no question that it was his action which provoked them into action which spurred on their team because the match simply changed at that precise moment over to Liverpool’s favour. Arsenal were very lucky, both to avoid conceding more and for having a goalkeeper who prevented them from losing twice more.

Players without discipline are a liability to the teams they’re fighting (literally) for. Don’t they get that? Could be a sending off, or, as yesterday, it riled up the opposing crowd. Message to Xhaka: don’t be a tosser.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday. If Jesus was alive today (kind’a literally, rather than… sort of, that other way) He’d drive an electric car.

A xxxx

I love this time in the football season. The sharp end. When things get decided. Who wins what. Which cups go to whom. Where the valuable final placings are set.

Spurs are still in with a good shout for a 4th place finish. We just need Newcastle to get a 10-point penalty deduction for some dubious Saudi irregularities there, which I’m sure could be found in time. Or for Manchester United to just fuck off. Oh, and we need to win a few more games. Possibly the most difficult of those three possibilities. Though we did win yesterday. I’ll say ‘the hard way’, but ‘at da ennadaday’, free points is free points. Innit. The hard way? Yeah, we always do things the hard way. Yesterday’s hard bit involved having 2 Brighton goals overturned by VAR (I fucking love VAR, always have, never had a bad word to say about it) and they also had a clear cut penalty not given. So effectively we lost 4-2 but actually managed to win it 2-1.

And we also ‘lost’ our caretaker manager and our possible next manager (if tales are to be believed) who both got sent off by the ref after fighting on the touch line.

Oh yes, managers. Where push comes to shove. And both apply when they get sacked. At this time of year it all becomes very critical.

Nottingham Forest lost yesterday leaving them in a very precarious position. Leaving the club in a ‘stick or twist’ situation with their manager. ‘Shit or bust’, perhaps. Because although they love(d) Steve Cooper in Nottingham, would a change improve their chances of relegation avoidance?

Chelsea have tried the ‘twist’ option, though being fairly ‘safe’, they can afford to experiment. So they brought in Frank Lampard as a ‘caretaker’ because he’ll (apparently) ‘boost the morale’ at the club. How’d that work yesterday, Frankie?? And his problem will be the same as his predecessor’s, namely, how do you keep multi-million pound superstars happy when they’re sitting on the bench because you have too many to count? Personally, I find the man rather depressing.

David Moyes managed to scrape a win with West Ham yesterday leaving him safe for the next 8 days until they lose to Arsenal.

Here’s my plan for Spurs:

Get Vincent Kompany in as manager, (suggested by Nathan the Gooner, bless him). He’s fucking brilliant, (Kompany, not Nathan, as I said, he’s a Gooner), delightfully charming and has done miracles at Burnley. The man is a ‘winner’ in every sense and I love him. Possibly not as much as I love Ollie Watkins, the Villa striker, with whom I have a man-crush. We should sell Harry Kane (yes, I am the antichrist but hear me out) and with the 295 million quid we get, buy in Ollie and build some creativity into the team. We need Christian Eriksen back. Or Luca Modric, he’s got a few more… months in him, surely?

Ok, Arsenal playing at Liverpool is a rather delicious fixture for later, I shall enjoy. Possibly.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Ok, that was Passover. Which is ‘an ongoing issue’ for the next six days, but the main event, the ‘seder’ is now, officially, over. We did one Wednesday night at extended family and it was fab. We told the story. But Lila and Joey weren’t there as it was felt that 3 hours of intellectual debate (not me), drinking alcohol and being profane (definitely me), might be too much for ones so small. So last night we had our own one, at home, in their honour. Because it is a great story, filled, as most biblical stories are, with horror and death, intrigue and destruction, murder, escape, goodies and baddies and miracles. Even so, the kids’ attention spans were much longer making their chocolate brownies than for ‘the story’. Which lasted about 12 minutes before descending into chaos. If I’m honest, that was 9 minutes longer than I’d thought.

So we’re moving on. Its time for Jesus to rear his head once more, as it is Good Friday. Another good biblical tale including horror and death… etc. I’ve always been confused by precisely why the day was in any way ‘good’, celebrating as it does, the crucifixion of the main character. Its like having Top Gun 3 in which Tom Cruise dies in the opening ‘shot’. But there ya go, maybe those Christians had a great sense of irony when they named the day. Or maybe they weren’t Tom Cruise fans.

But I love Easter, like truly, madly, deeply love Easter. Not only you get the longest weekend of the year off work, but you get to do it (if you have ‘foresight’ and ‘planning’) with a cupboard full of Easter Eggs. Like wot I do. Even though they seem to be an endangered species these days and much harder to find than they’ve always been.

But Jesus. Died on Good Friday, came back Easter Monday. So the legend goes.

What did he do on Saturday and Sunday? That’s what I want to know. Did he go to Spurs, like all the other good, Jewish boys? Or was he already that ‘very naughty boy’ we later learned he was? I think we need to know.

My only Jesus experience was one day walking past Lords Cricket Ground (a TRULY holy place) when a complete stranger stopped, looked at me and said: “Jesus died to save you”. Nothing else, then he walked on. He was not (apparently) nutter, nor tramp, neither priest (no collar) nor rabbi (no beard), but they were his only words. My sole concern being that if this was true, did my salvation end upon resurrection? I’ve been worried about it ever since.

Happy Easter, may it be kosher.

A xxxx

And thus did the Jewish people escape their slavery and bondage, their enforced BDSM, at the hands of the Egyptians, not even having time to wait for their bread to rise, as Moses led them through the Red Sea which God parted, because there were no people traffickers with rubber dinghies. They were met in Palestine by Suella Braverman who sent them to Rwanda… sorry, wrong story. Everyone knows the Passover story, its told every year. And tonight will be no exception. Because the story needs to be told, and it will be. Its actually fun, that rarest of commodities in any religious event. So much fun that it’s now been promoted to a ‘cultural event’ to allow me to enjoy it too.

And its all about symbolism. We eat special foods, like a mix of chopped apple, nuts and wine, to symbolise the cement they used to build the pyramids, we eat horseradish and other bitter herbs to symbolise bitter times, eggs for re-birth and, of course, we eat matzo. Unleavened bread. To symbolise the stupidity and insanity of modern day interpretations by obsessives.

For the next eight days, no Jew worthy of the title would let bread pass his/her/their lips. Ok, I get the symbolism, let’s ride it for a week. But because bread is made with wheat, all wheat products must be banned too. Not just banned, but banished from the home. Bread, cereals, pasta, anything with anything wheaty included or even implied. Like… whisky!! Made from… something akin to wheat, I don’t fucking know, ask a farmer. Cutlery and crockery is changed over, lest a bit of stray wheat be stuck on a spoon after the dishwasher has steam-blasted it for 15 minutes. You must avoid wheat!!!! At all costs.

And it costs a fortune. Because those who, like REALLY care, will only eat foods which have been marked as ‘kosher for Passover’, meaning that the pint of milk in their fridge, with that essential label, has been watched, from cow-shed to supermarket, to ensure no wheat fell in it on the way. But its milk? You may think. BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW ITS NOT CONTAMINATED!!!! With… BREAD!!!! Because health and safety is so stringent that NOTHING enters manufactured foods, ever. But there ya go, no label, not kosher. Jam, cheese, Coca-fucking-cola. And, of course, labelled produce is 20 to 50% higher in price than ‘normal’. Cos some schmuck with a beard has to watch it all the way. To ensure its wheat-free-ness.

But here’s the stupidity and insanity bit. The only thing you can eat is matzo. And its made of wheat.

When the nice and fun and lovely gives way to the obsessive and stupid, that’s where I get left behind. But I do love a good story. And even more, a good meal.

Happy Passover

A xxxx