Andy's Glasses

Leeds is precisely 200 miles from London. I know. I just counted every single one of them. Twice. Once there, once back. And all because somebody died. A real ‘somebody’, not just ‘the death of Spurs’ dreams’, the end of all hope for football fans in N17, not even the day civilisation died (when Arsenal won 2-nil last week). Nope, this was a real person. Laid to rest in Leeds. And we went. Because sometimes, you just need to.

It was a remarkably unremarkable journey up there. Which is the absolute best you can ever hope for on the first motorway in the land, designed for 1955 levels of traffic and butchered by the 2020s obsessions of slowing everyone down, speed fucking cameras and worst of all… emissions! I kid you not. As you approach Sheffield (in your 40-ton, 8-litre diesel spewing monster lorry, or even Mini Countryman) you see a sign saying ‘slow down to 60!!! For reduction of emissions!)

Sheffield. Where they used to make steel. Where two monster chimneys adjacent to the motorway spewed out 24-hour a day shit for 60 years. Where all the inhabitants smoke 60-a-day. Most importantly: where we really don’t give a shit about Sheffieldies and we’re in a hurryyyyyy!!! So I sped up to 80. I’m that kind’a guy.

So we buried poor old Mike, God rest his soul, had some lunch and set off home.

My wife has so many attributes. She’s organised, she’s really together… errrrr… she’s gorgeous (I really do have to say that), a fantastic swimmer… errrrr… she’s just FAB! But she can’t navigate for shit. Give her control of Waze and she’ll have me turning into Tesco’s car park or the driveway of number 7 Shakespeare Drive, Bradford, before you can say ‘turn the car around… turn the car around… turn the car…’ Its just not her thing. I’m ok with that.

So for the way home she called up the satnav of choice and plugged in ‘home’ and off we went, back to the M1. Or so I thought. Waze decided that in fact, the A1 was a better bet. But it didn’t tell us. It certainly didn’t tell my navigator. So we trekked about 25 miles across West Yorkshire to find it.

I didn’t mind. I didn’t know, in fact until about half a mile down this funny-looking ‘M1’, when it announced ‘end of motorway’. Ahhhhh, its the A1M. Oh. Oh well, all roads point south. Eventually.

And as it happens that was also a nice, easy, clear run home. Just 9 hours after we left that morning. The only bad thing was that we made it home with sufficient time for me to see Arsenal score the winner against Man. United. Is one little traffic jam too much to ask for when you need it???

Happy Monday

A xxxx

So we’re living the dream. It’s not raining. In fact its absolutely gorgeous out there. Bright, sunny, just a fab looking morning. A… tennis morning!!! Perfect! And yet, its fairly cold. We arrived on the court to find it a sheet of ice. So we went for a coffee, came back half an hour later, all that sunshine must do something, surely. Yup, now the courts are half a sheet of ice. And half ‘my side’. Cleared by the ‘heat’ of +3 degrees. I wanted to play. I could run around like the loony to which I aspire on my side. Spurs Paul would have to be a bit more careful though. It was ankle-twistingly, leg breakingly, serious concussionly icy on his half. Not my fucking problem.

If only someone could devise an indoor tennis court, not subject to the whims of the weather. Oh yeah, they did that and I hate them. Horrible lighting, nasty perspective, carpet-burns, horrible. But at least consistently horrible, regardless of wind, rain and snow. Or better still, a bit more global warming, but in the winter. You all need to produce more carbon. In the interests of tennis.

Don’t know if Nadhim Zahawi plays tennis. I know he doesn’t pay much tax because they just fined him about 3 million quid for being naughty and cheating on his tax return. Well, that’s a bit harsh. Some shares which may have looked like his were actually held in his parents’ names by an offshore trust managed in tax-free Gibraltar by a third-party, resident on Mars where tax rates are notoriously low, and withdrawn to a Cayman Islands bank account in the name of ‘Not Zahawi, someone else’. Nothing wrong with that. But like it or loathe it, we actually need people like that in government. People who live in the real world, are very successful in that world and understand finance and business beyond the sacred walls of the Palace of Westminster. Career politicians lack real world experience. Successful businessmen just ‘get it’. And if the chairman of our governing party tried to deprive the NHS of a few boxes of PPE to financially compensate himself for giving it all up for the nation, all the better.

Otherwise we end up being run by civil servants like Kier Starmer, who seems to understand nothing.

Happy, icy, sunny Saturday

A xxxx

What do doctors know? Well, they know lots about things they can’t do. Treat a virus. Make you young again. Prevent cancer. Stop heart attacks. See patients. But to give them credit, they can be useful. If you’re lucky enough to ever be able to see one as they remain in full-covid mode, locked in a security protected practice, guarded by seven armed pit-bullesque reception staff who only answer the phone between 9.15 and 9.17 on a Tuesday and only to make telephone appointments and tell you “DON’T COME IN TO THE PRACTICE!!!!”

So I managed to speak to one on Wednesday, by phone, obviously. She was very nice, I have to say. And was probably wearing a mask to speak, so I was safe. Because I have a pain. In the armpit. Strange I know. It’s a nerve pain, probably from the years of having a dodgy shoulder. Which has now been replaced, but they left most of the nerves in tact. Certainly this one. The troublesome one. I was happy with the phone bit because there is absolutely nothing you can see. So she prescribed me some pills which are great for nerve pain.

The above is part of the list of possible side effects, with their accompanying probabilities. Basically, I have a 90% chance of contracting a virus and a 10% chance of dropping dead. With pretty much everything else covered in between. But EVERYTHING.

I know this is standard ‘COVER YER ASS!!!’ tactics but there’s really so much that can go wrong. But really?

Then I had to ponder the other drugs they make you take. You know, you get to 60 and they change your ‘risk profile’ and force statins on you, make you take aspirin, plus various other shit. All of which come with similar warnings. So what about the combinations? I’m no conspiracy theorist but if I have a 60% chance of dyslexia from one drug and an 80% chance of loss of the use of one arm with another, then I have a 140% liyh9ose Beiojjl scieur ocwuouon cojssshoh

It’s fucking serious, man! Don’t take drugs! Unless you’re a Spurs fan, then TAKE EM ALL!!!!

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I have a routine. Everyone has routines. They’re unchanging. That’s why they’re routines. I emerge from my shower, apply various beauty products, none of which seem to have any noticeable effect, dress and come down for breakfast. A banana. Because I’m healthy. Because I’m calorie conscious. Because I’m an athlete!!! And mostly because they don’t have a breakfast buffet here where I can eat half a pig, the output of the henhouse and an entire bakery, like they have in Mexico. And I write to you.

So why is this day different from all others? Because I read in the paper that Emma Raducanu is playing Coco Gauff in the Aussie Open. Today!!! Or, possibly, ‘tonight’, could be ‘tomorrow’, you never know about days and times over there. But it started at 8am UK time. The only time that actually matters. I looked at my watch: 7.59!!! Game on.

We never turn the tv on during the day. Only for football. House rule. And Andrew Marr on Sunday morning, though he’s turned into Laura Kuensberg which is not quite so compelling. But for Emma? And Coco???

To watch Emma I’d climb a mountain. Fortunately I don’t have to; we don’t got none in our house. For Andy Murray I wouldn’t be prepared to turn around. Emma and Coco is something else though. They’re both incredible tennis players. And they’re both incredibly gorgeous. And hit the ball so fucking hard. I love tennis and bizarrely, I love gorgeous athletic women.

Its almost the best thing ever. Its like a supercharged V8 Dodge, made of chocolate. Its like Spurs beating Arsenal last Sunday. It’s like Harry and Meghan hugging Wills and Kate, but if you actually cared.

And now I have to go to work. Maybe I’ll call in sick. Lovesick.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

As the wait for the electric car enters its 13th month, my concerns for our fragile planet remain significant. With my level rising from ‘whatever’ to ‘hmmmm’ with the last raise of world temperature. But I can’t save the entire planet, all the whales, the Brazilian rainforest, just with one car. So boffins have come up with a brilliant invention.

They’re sending up a satellite. I know, ‘space’ is awash with fucking satellites, its like the M25 for satellites up there, but wait. This one consists of 2 massive ‘reflectors’ which catch the sun’s rays. It’s easy up there, no clouds. Thinking of using it for our next holiday. And then the rays are fed to a transmitter which converts the radiation to microwaves and beams them down to planet earth, drifting below. And although they always tell you microwaves are dangerous and cause horrible things like death, these ones are different. And they will be stored as energy to heat our homes and light up the world. All for free. Though granted, there are some ‘set up costs’.

The transmitter and the concept is British, obviously (?), because we’re good at ‘space’. Other than rockets. But the reflectors are being made by the Saudis. A nation so innovative in ‘green technology’ that they’re currently building a ‘green city’ out there in the desert. I’m thinking ‘solar power’ but I could be wrong. Thus we’re getting them to help.

Negotiations are therefore taking place as to whether this new energy source, once up and running, will be allowed to power the houses of gay people. Will women be allowed to turn on the lights if there’s not a man in the house? But I appreciate these are minor technicalities which will be ironed out.

They didn’t say how much energy will be produced. Would it power the City of Birmingham for a month? Or heat half a kettle in Wiltshire? We need to know more. But its very exiting nonetheless.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

“It hurts, mummy, it hurts”; runs the plaintive cry
“Make it go away, mummy, send it way up high.”
“Get fucking real”, answers mummy, “and get a fucking grip”
It’s only a game of football, you snivelling little shit.

But its not an “only” anything, it happens again and again,
It is life itself!, distilled down to a microcosm of pain.
I hate to lose a football match, whoever it may be to
But to lose THAT particular one is oh so hard to do.

It hurts on many levels, the agony, the shame, the frustration
The shockwave of pain rocks more than just the nation
It is felt the whole world over, from Texas to Kharkov
And even up to worlds and planets we’ve never even heard of.

Because when Arsenal win a football match it is always a moral crime
But when they win at White Hart Lane society has declined.
It is a sin against the good and noble, a statement of intent
That the devil has moved to north London, and he’s not going to pay his rent.

This was the proverbial ‘game of two halves’ indeed,
As pretty much most of them are, you have to concede
But in this match both those halves were horrible, dire and sad
So for consistency, if nothing else, it wasn’t really too bad.

They scored a couple of goals, with a serious error of goal-keeping
Who fucked up so bad he had all of us distressed and weeping.
The other goal was a cock-up too, this time managerial
Thinking that the Arse’s extra mid-fielder would be simply immaterial.

The fact is that we were beaten by a better team all round
With a manager, though Spanish, has his feet firmly on the ground.
And that’s the hardest thing of all to accept in any meaningful way
That we lost it fair and square at the end of the (fucking) day.

And as Joey sat there, playing with his toys, oblivious to the game
I had to think, with tears in my eyes, how most shit stays the same.
‘You are our future!’, I thought, for my Spurs fan of tomorrow
He will share our rich legacy… of misery, anger and sorrow.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Xxxx

Mel has a lot of baths. So I get to watch what I want. For 30, 40, even 50 minutes an evening, depending on what book she’s reading, where she is in that book and how hot the water was when she went in. It’s a formula.
Time= (temp-3/4 x 60)/Stephen King x page number/379-x. Simple.

Being a person of undisclosed gender affiliation but in possession of a penis, a beard and a collection of guns (only metaphorically), that means I watch football or music. If some clever person produced ‘Watford versus Stoke: The Musical!’, they’d be onto a winner in my house. But in the absence of that, I tend to ‘flick’ between a lesser match with peripheral interest, Brentford vs Bournemouth, maybe, and my new fave channel, 70s Rock Now.

They played Walk on the Wild side, by Lou Reed. I love that track. From his unbelievably brilliant ‘Transformer’ album, which I possess in every format its ever been made in and await the day when it can be permanently implanted in my personal chip. Along with Ziggy Stardust, Are You Experienced and Stop Making Sense. Possibly Bella Donna because the idea of 1979 Stevie Nicks permanently in my brain appeals greatly.

Would they make that song today? It’s about transvestites. Specifically, ladyboys on the game. “But she never lost her head; even when she was giving head”, did the BBC really play that line when the song was riding high in the charts? And yet the song is music first, then content. And it is a wonder on the ear. As it always was. How ‘woke’ was Lou Reed, who referred to all the characters in his song as ‘she’? In 1972.

Next up, just after Chelsea conceded their 3rd goal against Manchester City, came Spanish Stroll. A song which I hadn’t heard for positively decades. Probably because Mink Deville were a bit ‘one-hit-wonder-ish’. But if you’re gonna have just one hit, make it that one. It’s strange in format, unusual in output and generally just different. Individual. Imaginative. And brilliant.

This afternoon I shall force myself not to check out what rock’s a’playing whilst watching Spurs playing Arsenal. The match I absolutely hate to watch. The most uncomfortable viewing since Prince Andrew went into hiding. Joey’s coming to watch it with me. Always a welcome distraction. As you hear the crashes in another room.

Agitating Sunday

A xxxx

So now the question has shifted, the blame put elsewhere, triggered by Laura Kuensberg asking Rishi Sunak if he saw a private doctor. He dithered. She asked again. He obfuscated. She repeated. He talked about Ukraine. She said the question in a slightly different way, he answered with all the directness of a taxi-driver trying to hike up a fair. The Labour Party instantly leapt upon poor little Rishi in a very obvious, narrow-minded, Labour Party way.

Private medicine is ‘THE PROBLEM’. Using such a thing is blasphemy in the court of the god that is the NHS. If you use private medical care you whisper it and should be ashamed because you’re taking doctors away from The NHS!

Which is all bollocks because what you’re actually doing is not taking a place in an NHS queue. Leaving it for someone else. Consultants don’t work 97-hour weeks. Not for the NHS anyway.

So they split their work. They do their required sessions for the NHS, for which they earn about 100k a year. And then they do private work. And they do that… for MONEY!!! To supplement their NHS salary.

SUPPLEMENT!!!! Cry the likes of Wes Streeting, THEY’RE ALREADY EARNING 4 TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE!!!!!!

But here’s the thing. To become a consultant takes years. At least 10. Years of exceptionally hard work and study, exceedingly low wages and masses of stress. If there was no way to supplement their ‘decent’ consultant wage by engaging in lucrative private work; why the fuck would they bother becoming doctors? When a lawyer can earn a million quid a year? Ok, there’s the ‘call’, the ‘vocation’, the ‘need to help others’, but you can even justify accountancy on those terms. Loosely speaking, obviously.

If we only had the NHS and private medicine was banned, other than the fact that it would simply collapse like a black hole, doctors would have to be paid significantly more otherwise no-one would ever choose to become one when they could instead turn their intellect to banking and live the high life. Then who would do the medical research?

We are blessed to have a 2-tier health system. I get that its unfair for those who can’t afford BUPA, but for those who can, like Rishi, using it can only benefit the NHS. And when it eventually and finally does get re-built, it will undoubtedly use outside ‘resources’ to share the load. Otherwise it will be in an ever-growing crisis until the day it just stops altogether.

Unfortunately THE NHS has been elevated to such a god-like status that any talk of change or alternatives is immediately met with outcry and declarations of war. By Wes Streeting. And Laura Kuensberg.

Happy fucking raining Saturday

A xxxx

If I’d have know that global warming was this bad, I’d have turned off my central heating boiler years ago. Got me a new wife, cos Mel would have left due to the cold, or thrown me out, due to the cold. I’d have driven petrol cars less, burned less coal, taken less flights, breathed out less and… emitted less carbon. Cos let’s face it; none of us were really that bothered about ‘the hottest year since records began’, nor the ‘longest dry spell since Harry Potter dehydrated Snape’, nor even a few freak hurricanes happening so far away they barely disturbed a single leaf outside my front door. What happens on the telly stays on the telly. I’ve barely noticed 2/3rds of tropical rainforest flora and fauna becoming extinct due to habitat changes because that doesn’t affect the price of fuel in north London.

But its seemingly been pissing down with rain constantly since the dry spell ended. We slipped from drought to flood without me noticing. One minute it was just lovely and the next tennis matches started getting cancelled. And that’s when I take note and start to question. “WHY is it fucking raining so fucking much???”, is the obvious first question. Followed by “What??? More fucking rain???” Didn’t say they were deep questions, nor thought-provoking, just obvious and rather profane. But this weather can only be attributed to ‘global warming’. In the same way people dying is attributed to ‘the NHS crisis’ and satellite-carrying rockets launched from Cornwall failing at deploying said cargo because of technical hitches.

Shit happens. Then we look for someone to blame. Personally I blame this current ‘wet spell’ (more rain in January that we usually get in 4 years, and its only the 13th) on Harry and Meghan. It’s obvious really. They’ve upset the gods. Who, for some reason, are taking it out on us. (Just a note on these gods: when Prince Andrew was abusing little girls no tennis was cancelled due to rain!!)

There’s also the ultimate irony of life on Earth. How is it that half of Sudan hasn’t had rain for 3 years and everyone’s starving when we have way more than enough to go round three times? You’d think, in these times when I can pay my gas bill whilst walking in the park, or have a geezer on a motorbike bring me the pizza of my choice, to my door, without having to speak to anyone, that someone would have worked out the water thing. Invent a barrel. Or a pipe. Because I hereby leave all ‘my’ rain to Sudan, Somalia and anyone else who wants it.

Happy dry Friday (so far)

A xxxx

Its just about da maffs. Simple. Goes like this.

Your family fucking hates you, despises your wife, has no interest in your children, was glad to see the back of you and has washed its hands of any future involvement.

So the question.

Do you take 170 million quid or not?

Whether you do or you don’t take the money, all the above still applies. Ok, not quite as badly, but pretty much the same. But you’ll be poorer. And still hated, if you don’t take it. Or you can grab all you can get just for putting into words what you’ve been alluding to and hinting at all along?

Its a no-brainer. Take the cash. Bentleys and butlers don’t come cheap and its what you’ve always had and still feel entitled to. You can always get a new family, can’t you? Maybe Meghan’s? Oh, forgot, she hates her dad, as well as Harry’s. There’s always mum. Better than Camilla. ANYTHING is better than Camilla. Or you can buy a family. On e-bay. Probably about 250k. Adopt them from Ukraine maybe.

Harry apparently netted about 90 million for the book and 80 mil for interviews and the Netflix series. And people actually think that’s bad! Its basic good business sense. The small step from ‘black sheep of the family’ to ‘international pariah and hate figure’ comes with a purse worthy of the biggest fight Vegas has ever staged.

I don’t blame H & M at all. They’re looking after number 1. He’s still the coolest ex-Royal ever and she’s the best looking princess since Margot Robbie played Elizabeth 1st in Mary, Queen of Scots (only the bits before they covered her face in boils and shit). So why is everyone making such a fuss? Because he admits to taking drugs? I’m aware that drugs are only ever ‘tried’ by other people’s children, NOT MINE, but when 92% of all under 18s have sampled every class A, B and C product available, it sort of becomes like porn, which only ‘other people watch’. Furthermore, in the ‘alternative section’ (T2) of today’s Times, they’re advocating the use of very ‘trippy’ substances to cure all manner of mental health conditions. And that’s THE TIMES!!! So it must be true.

Basically, leave them alone! They’re only trying to get their family loving each other. Just… in a bit of a funny way.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx