Andy's Glasses

I actually don’t remember precisely where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. 1963… probably in school, at age 7 I was too young to be in the snooker hall or smoking behind the bike sheds, so I’m guessin’, school. But I do remember precisely where I was when Gareth Bale scored a hat-trick against Inter Milan at the San Siro. Firstly because, after being 4-nil down at half time to the Italians, eventually losing only 4-3 felt like the most victorious, energising, screaming, hysterical loss ever. We won the second half. In fact, He won the second half. And at the time, he was our left back.

If he ever played better than in that match it was definitely in the return leg at White Hart Lane. He didn’t score but he created everything we did to beat Inter 3-1. He fucking terrorised them from start to finish. At his totally unplayable best.

Unfortunately, (for Spurs), those two matches hi-lighted our Gareth as ‘the one to watch’ and over the next couple of years the BIG boys of Europe queued up to sign the Welsh wonderboy.

Unfortunately (for Gareth) he went to Real Madrid as the world’s most expensive player. Because however brilliant he was, and he was, playing as Christiano Ronaldo’s side-kick was never going to be his best move. They like their superstars to act like superstars. Rampant Ronaldo, Beefy Benzema and… Golfing Gareth. Who preferred to lead a quiet life off the pitch, not in keeping with his teammates high life excesses which the arrogant Madridistas love. They never found a place for Gareth like we did at Spurs.

So he returned for a late-career loan season so we could show him what love means in north London. Otherwise there was always Wales to get love. Where he is a true God. Up there with Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennet, Ryan Giggs and Katherine Zeta-Jones. (There are no other famous Welsh people).

And now he’s retired from the game. The game which lost him for about 4 of the last 5 years after Zidane decided that paying someone 500 grand a week doesn’t mean you have to play them in the team. Zizu’s loss.

From Cardiff to London and occasionally in Madrid, he lit up our world. And now he’ll retire, play more golf and live as quietly and low-key as his massive fortune allows.

He was a true superstar.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We need to sort out the ‘national ‘elf’. It’s in a ‘crisis’. People are dying. Unfortunately, not enough people to make the system function in any way which may be perceived as ‘efficient’, normal, cost-effective or probably even ‘viable’. We’d need to kill off approximately 20 million of the population to even make a start on that.

Why 20 mil? Because that would take us back to almost the population of 1948 when someone had the fucking brilliant but impossible idea of ‘providing free health care for an entire nation!’ So Nye Bevan invented the NHS. Like Frankenstein before him, he had no idea of the ‘monster’ that in reality he’d been responsible for.

In 1948 you bought a syringe for life. 2 needles, one as a spare, and that was it. You wore a white jacket. Forever. No matter how much blood was splattered on it, washed it once a week. Or two. So high set up costs, low ongoing ones. Nowadays there’s 276 industries just providing disposable stuff for hospitals. Gloves, masks, gowns, overalls, coveralls, hats, shoe-covers, ear muffs, nostril plugs, knee-warmers… But half of it isn’t fit for purpose, the other half is made by bra makers to enrich themselves.

Same with drugs. In 1948 you had aspirin or if it was really bad, penicillin, the newly discovered wonder-drug. Available at 7s 11d from a geezer who made them in his garage. Next to his Model T Ford which he was re-boring. If those meds didn’t cure you, you died. Nowadays drug provision to the NHS is a get-rich scheme for third rate Pharma companies manufacturing medicines which have passed their original licences.

And although they invented cancer in… long time ago, probably, they didn’t call it that, they called it death. Cancer was really ‘invented’ when they worked out what it was, where it was, and how to get rid of it. But that didn’t come cheap.

Best of all though is that with NHS supervision, we can all live forever. No more ‘3 score and ten’, that’s the new ‘three baker’s dozens plus 4’. But that means not just that we have nearly 30% more people than in 1948 but we have a much higher percentage of old people. Who get ill more often. And require help. And care.

Therefore, to make the NHS ‘sustainable’ and take it out of ‘crisis’ we need a complete restructuring, to align it to the needs of not just the current time, but to the projected needs of the future. And to do that you need clever people. So that eliminates the government. And the fuckwit opposition who just want to throw more money at it. Which, as we all know, don’t work.

We need to either do that or leave it in the hands of Sid James and Barbara Windsor in Carry on Doctor. Or just have a compulsory ‘end of life’ limit for everyone, say… 77… 85… 46 (NOOOOOOO!!!)

Happy, healthy Monday

A xxxx

So yesterday morning found me and younger daughter in Primrose Hill. The smuggest of all of smug North London. The ponciest of the poncy, the twee-est of the twee, where you won’t find a high street name among the shops, you won’t find an oik (apart from a few Gallaghers, and they’re rich oiks) and its way too posh for Starbucks. I would say ‘it’s charming’ but that’s only what they’d like to hear. So after our inevitable coffee and muffin (honey, cinnamon and banana, if you care, rather yummy, we shared both it and the guilt and it only cost £26.97 with macchiato frotho oat-almond-vegan-2-shot-extra-skimmed-flat-lattes) we strolled over to Camden. 5 minutes away but a different world. Out with the ‘Kensington Casual’ look of Primmy Hill and over to the gothic grunge/punk drug-addict look of Chalk Farm. Where, once you’ve stepped over a few tramps and drunks, you find…

Amazon Fresh.

The supermarket. And we went in!!! It’s been there a while but I’d never gone in before. Like, through the door and… inside. Where there’s a barrier. Access is only by app or by getting your account up on your phone, then it says ‘Hello Rachel’ (probably unless you have a different name) and opens up the door to a new world.

Which, if I’m honest, is pretty much like the old world. In all but one very interesting difference. There’s no ‘check out’ facility. No tills, no ‘do-it-yourself’ machines, no scanning of what you take as you go along, no nuffink. Just… stuff to buy. But how do you buy it? And that is the ‘billion dollar question’. Not my billion dollars but Jeff Bezos’s, obviously. Once you’ve ‘checked in’ you just cruise round, grab what you want and walk out with it. Need a bag? Paper ones are free, others cost a quid. Or just stuff everything in your pockets, they don’t care. Just walk away; you’re done.

They’ve managed to take all the pleasure out of shoplifting in one store.

Because 5 minutes later they email you an invoice. Bastards. But interestingly the goods they sell are very very reasonable. Less than Waitrose, overall, I reckon, but I’m neither the world’s best nor careful shopper, it has to be noted. A fresh-baked almond croissant for 95p????? Amazing.

But I can’t work out how they do it. So I’ll say ‘algorithms’. Modern day explanation for anything inexplicable. Magic.

Worth checking out. Great pun.

Happy Sunday. I hate rain.

A xxxx

I used to fight with my brother about three times a day. He pushed me to the ground. We didn’t have a dog so I couldn’t break his water bowl with my back. And I was never girly enough to wear a necklace so he couldn’t break it. But he would have. Instead he shut my finger in the door trying to keep me out of his room and I had to go to hospital to have the fingernail removed!! (The Queen didn’t get involved nor pass judgement… as usual!)

All fascinating stuff. And all falling into the “WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK????” category. Yet I too was a younger brother and my elder sibling thus ‘the heir’. To… errrr… well, not much really, but I still felt persecuted, scorned upon, second-classed and… lots of other things which us ‘spares’ have to endure. Though I’ve never killed even one man, when not at the wheel of a car, let alone 25!!! But ‘it was just a game of chess’. Fortunately I was never much good at chess either.

The similarities between me and Harry stop there. Other than the drugs. But everyone tried those in the 70s, it was part of life. Degenerate life, but life nonetheless. Otherwise, I was never ginger haired, failed to have sex with an old woman on a football field and didn’t marry an American. I married a Canadian, in fact, but that’s not relevant here. Why’s it always about HER????

The moral of the story is: never trust a fucking Spaniard.

The book, about me and Harry, is out next Tuesday but ‘due to an error’, it was released last Wednesday in Spain. Ooops. Question: how do you sell 300,000 copies of a book ‘in error’? Oh, muchas apologias, they juss’a fell on’a shelves. Tosseros!

I don’t speak Spanish. But I do speak English, quite well at times. Much better than a Quebekee speaks French, at least. But even that won’t make me read that stupid book. Nothing on earth will make me read that book. I know H feels aggrieved but its enough. Netflix, interviews, now this. All in an effort to ‘make his family come together again’. Yeah, how’s that working so far, Harry?

Happy Saturday

The Spare
xxxx

I like to tell you EVERYTHING. I have no secrets, no shame, no common sense. Almost no filters. I NEED you to know about every illness, every surgical procedure, every thought, idea, love, hate, desire, what I eat, drink, the drugs I take to keep me alive, the ones I take to make it worth living, I want you, my biggest fan, to know EVERYTHING!!!

Not just because I’m stupid but also because that way I can always blame you for not helping when it all goes wrong.

And then I forgot the most important thing which happened to me during the Mexico experience. The whole experience, which I ‘shared’, from take off to landing 9 days later, because I’m that kind’a guy. And yet I forgot…

Top Gun: Maverick!

I’ve already done the movies on the plane, both ways, even the ones I half-slept through (most of them). And yet forgot that one. How could I? The one we’ve all waited 40 years for!

Possibly because it really is almost infinitely forgettable. Possibly because it is, unsurprisingly, the original film re-made with grown-ups, and way more concealer and make-up taking much more care with lighting Tom Cruise’s face to keep the Dorian Gray version off screen where possible.

I had to watch it. Not just because I was stuck in a little hole for 9 hours with a screen 21 inches from my face and a complete inability to move, but also because I simply love Top Gun (no subtitle), the first. It had everything. Starting with Kelly McGillis and ending with the Porsche speedster she drove. Nothing else was important. Ok, they shot a few Russian planes out of the sky, sang ‘you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’’, had hi-jinks and shaved their chest hair, but it was Kelly’s film. I may have been impressionable when it came out. I think Tom Cruise may have been in it to; who can remember?

Actually I’m being cruel. This film was totally different. Except for the shooting Russians out of the sky, shaved chests and laddish hi-jinks. It even had Val Kilmer in it!!! The Ice Man!!! Looked like he’s been on ice for a decade or so. But (no spoilers) as he dies of cancer in the movie, (ok, some spoilers) perhaps it was just ‘brilliant acting’.

But the worst thing about the film really was that it didn’t have a 25 year-old Kelly McGillis in it. I can’t forgive that.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Football happened. And we won. Incredible how happy that makes me. Because this was a victory for Spurs, thus for me, for Antonio Conte, our money-chasing super-manager who threatens to leave every time we lose, for Harry Kane, because he’s special in a very special way, for Sonny because he’s wonderful, for all the people in the world and for GOD HERSELF (oooh, that’s controversial) in whose name Spurs play!

In what many have described as ‘the greatest victory since Spurs last won’, my boys ran rampant in the second half after choosing to rest in the first. A tactic which proved astute as Palace’s failure to capitalise on their dominant spell left it wide open for a Spurs team who’ve scored 73% of their goals this year in the second periods of their matches.

All we have to do now is repeat that in our next two league matches against Arsenal and Manchester City. How hard can that be?

I may have complained a little, ‘last year’, about the World Cup. Qatar. Human rights, the slaughter of the workers, the persecution of the gays, blah, blah, blah… and having the tournament in the winter!!! Never has such a thing ever been considered. Nor been required, in ‘normal countries’, where camels don’t live. But if I’d have known the consequences, I’d have been the biggest advocate and ambassador for that lovely Gulf state. Because it means we’re now playing catch-up. All the matches missed during the 6-week gap. Resulting in football, on tv, every night. I’m campaigning for the next tournament to be in Dubai.

And a word about the Pope wot died. Not the current one (white haired old foreign geezer in a dress), but the previous one (white haired old foreign geezer in a dress). How is the world going to mourn properly if you die at the same time as Pele? He’s taken all the world’s compassion, sympathy and obituary-space. I don’t even know if the old Pope ever played football, let alone who he might have played for, but he can’t compete with Pele.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Last night, an inauspicious Tuesday in January, was elevated, hopefully temporarily, to its new status of ‘the best day of my life!!!!’

Because this is what it has come to. For me. And possibly many other Spurs fans. Arsenal didn’t even have to lose to have me leaping around the lounge in joy and excitement (didn’t actually leave the couch; it was metaphorical ‘leaping’), the nil-nil draw with Newcastle was sufficient to once more believe in god. Ok, maybe not a ‘proper god’, he’d have Spurs at the top of the league, but some lesser type god, like the Greeks had. Possibly why the Greeks are no longer have a serious football league. I make no judgments and refuse to make religious observations. Other than about Catholics, obviously.

The match was simply… dull. But dull has a place. And that place was apparently the Emirates as Newcastle simply blunted the Gunners for 95 minutes (though Arteta wanted MORE!!!!, much much more for all that time-wasting). Newcastle had a plan, and it worked. The plan, brilliantly devised by Eddie Howe, was ‘STOP THEM!’ And they did. They pressed the Arsenal players, they ganged up on them, they blocked them and, if none of that worked, they just hacked them down. Always good to see. The Arsenal players, to their immense credit, fell about writhing on the floor at the merest touch and deserve the collective Oscar for ‘tossers in torment’, after the type of acting one is rarely privileged to see outside a year 3 pantomime. Yet they chose to mock any Newcastle player who went down either genuinely or to waste time. Which Newcastle started at minute 1.

As the match progressed, Mikel Arteta got proportionately frustrated, angry and obnoxious. But heh, that’s his job. One of them. The other is winning matches but that didn’t go quite as well as the ranting and shit.

So that it. Arsenal ‘dropped 2 points’. The first two they’ve dropped at home this season, and all the better for it. Unfortunately, they’re still 8 points clear at the top of the table. For now!!! Until Spurs start our ‘run’. Any minute now. Just you wait and see!

(Not very) Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Well, Pele died over a week ago, and even with Spurs playing on Sunday, there’s still no contestants emerging to challenge for his ‘best player ever’ title. But scanning the papers I’d missed whilst away, I came across the Times’ obit supplement. Which is brilliant. Ok, they’ve had a long time to prepare it, he took a long time for the inevitable to seal the deal, but even so. And of all the brilliant quotes, this one from Eric Cantona is the one I like best. Better even that “Hello, I’m Ronald Regan, the president of the United States of America. You need no introduction, everyone knows who Pele is”. But the nutty Frenchman summed up my own feelings totally. Even reducing his normally very opaque style of saying anything to honour Pele. Not just the man. But ‘that pass’, for ‘that goal’, in that game in the that World Cup. A simple ‘lay off’, no pressure, nothing fancy, at the end of a move starting with the Brazil goalie and ending up with the ball slammed into Italy’s net by Brazil’s right back. For me it is the best goal ever, in the best world cup ever and despite what happened immediately beforehand and immediately after, ‘that pass’ defines the brilliance of Pele. And I think I speak for Eric Cantona here too. Because his English ain’t dat good.

During two exceptionally long flights I watched some films. Not about Pele. Oddly there was one about Maradona on offer but I declined it, being so close to Pele’s death. And because there’s a limit to how long I can spend with ear buds in. So I watched ‘Where the Crawdads sing’ because I loved the book. The film was ok. Not brilliant, but resoundingly ok. Such a great story they couldn’t go that far wrong. But then decided for the ‘mega-schmaltzy’ option at the end. So many people watching it they had to bale out the tears with buckets so the plane didn’t sink.

But then I watched ‘Bullet Train’. And that is brilliant, with no qualifying statements. Ok, its weird, its wacky, its bizarre and its very funny, but that’s all good. Its a bit Tarantino, but the violence is more heavily stylised; its a bit Guy Richie and its basically Brad Pitt being very very dry and silly. There’s others in it too, but no-one you know and they virtually all die by the end anyway. Everyone dies in this film. Not Pele, he did it on his own. I’d never heard of this film but if you can find it, watch it. You’ll thank me. Or hate me for wasting 2 hours of your life.

I watched the latest version of ‘Firestarter’ because that was the first Stephen King book I ever read and thus holds a place in my heart. Which Zac Efron couldn’t fill in this film. Could barely fill a hole in my shoe. The original movie (Drew Barrymore, no less) was fairly awful, this was only dire. I just like the idea of a 6 year old female human flame-thrower. Don’t we all?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

For anyone living on the correct side of the river, here in the leafy, lovely, little-bit-smug but ever-so-pleasant Norf, Gatwick Airport is where Bealzibub hangs out. It is a curse on modern transportation. Inaccessible, far distant, only approachable on roads you NEVER want to use or by trains which they don’t run at Christmas time. Perfect, let’s fly from there!! Not out of choice, obviously, but it was a charter and Gatwick was part of the deal. Noooooooooo…

I hate driving there but was prepared to. Except: to park is so stupidly expensive that it was cheaper to get a taxi. Which was itself, having unilaterally decided to include our departure date of Christmas Eve as part of the ‘holiday pricing’, also ridiculously expensive. But the trains were striking and the parking not happening so I said to the guy from the mini cab firm we always use; I said: “look Mo, that’s not very Christian of you, is it?”, but no, its holiday, 20 quid extra.

Today we returned. And walked 2 minutes from arrivals to the train station. Where the Gatwick express was ‘un-running due to (pick an excuse and write it here)’. But we didn’t want that anyway. We wanted the Thameslink. Train leaving in 6 minutes, going to West Hampstead. ‘The Dream’. Went to the ticket machine and, due to something like ‘old age’, but for much younger people like me and Mel, the tickets cost £11.90 for both of us. I thought that was a bit steep really, at my age, but let it pass. Arriving in West Hampstead 50 minutes later. The taxi would have taken twice that.

The moral being: there is now hope when forced to go to Gatwick.

As opposed to Spurs for which it is appearing that there is simply no hope whatsoever. I know, we’re 5th in the league but yesterday almost ruined my entire holiday as we reached a low point, even when the bar has been quite low for some time now.

I wonder if Gatwick have a football team…

Happy 2023

A xxxx

… do as the Canucks.

I don’t know when, but long after the Aztecs left, just before Montezuma was revenged, yet way after the ‘Mexico 1970’ World Cup in which Pele was the star, there came a new invasion of Caribbean Mexcio resulting in a new dominant power in the area There was no war, no coup, no meteor strike like the one wot killed the dinosaurs (hit the Yucatan… a long time ago), just, kind’a… death by tourism.

This shouldn’t be a problem. Canadians are the nicest, gentlest, liberal-est, most Trudeau-ist bunch of calm, cold, north-pole-dancers you could ever wish to find. They’re just nice. You go to Vancouver, hop over to Toronto, breeze into Banff, you’ll meet nothing but pleasant, polite, honest, decent Canadians.

Yet should you venture to Quebec… should you enter the land of the ‘Francophone’, you meet a totally different type of Canadian altogether. The look similar to the ‘Anglophones’, they even sound the same if they deign to speak to you in English. But when left to themselves they change… they morph… they degenerate… into something different. More sinister, more evil, more rude, more sunbed-stealing, and, worst of all… they speak FRENCH to each other.

And I’m aware that when anyone anywhere is speaking French, its always going to end in a war, a fight, an argument or a World Cup final loss. That’s just the way it is. But you’re thinking of ‘French French’. The French of Brigit Bardot, of Catherine Deneuve, of little-shit Macron, Sacha Distel; that wonderfully rich and sensual sound which leaves your knees weak and your goalkeeper floundering (Spurs joke, which really isn’t fucking funny any more).

Whereas I’m talking about Canuck French. Which sounds at times like Russian, at times like Portuguese and all the time like its being spoken by someone who learned French on an online written course with no conversation included. It bears as little resemblance to real French as Dick van Dyck’s ‘cockney’ in Mary Poppins did to real English. The words might be similar but the sound is offensive, lacks feeling, emotion, nuance and anything which might be considered beneficial or ‘nice’.

And our resort, spectacularly wonderful in every other respect, was about 70% occupied by Québécoises. Because for a 4 hour flight they can gain about 40 degrees of Celsius. So I understand their motivation. Doesn’t mean I have to like them.

Happy 2023. I’m at the airport waiting to fly.

A xxxx