Andy's Glasses

Sometimes you need to just think outside the box. To assess a disaster as something other than. To re-wire the thought patterns of the ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE!!!!

We have two problems: Energy and Russia. And they’re already related. Yeah, I know, we could just burn Russia and use it to heat our homes for 17 years, but is it ‘sustainable’? You’ve probably already thought of that one anyway. If, like me, you have psychopathic tendencies, feel the cold and hold all other nations to be worthless.

But those problems aren’t going away. In fact, they’re getting worse. Liz Truss is holding prices for energy in check here, by, basically, selling off the future by the excessive national borrowing we’re going to have to do. And now Putin (who definitely thinks along my lines, psychopathically speaking) is threatening the ‘nuclear option’, not specifically restricted to Ukraine, but for all of Europe, possibly the world. He’s an equal opportunity mass murderer. And he’s. ‘not bluffing’. Tosser.

All we have to do is make him go nuclear. Because each atomic warhead contains sufficient energy, once deployed, to run 5 Bitcoin ‘mines’ for 24 years. Or 37 small cities for 2,000 years. We just have to harness the energy from the explosion. How hard can that be? Just stand nearby with a few batteries from the Tesla and store it. Not only will we have almost endless power, but Russia will be paying for it.

A minor problem, just a matter of logistics really, is that maximum energy is provided during the first milliseconds of the explosion. The rest is just ‘fall out’, and no-one likes that whilst they’re eating their tea. Nor children that glow in the dark, but we’ll address all these things in time. But I happen to be very busy on the day of the explosion. So I’m going to send you to ‘ground zero’ with your batteries, a thermos of coffee and some wire, so you won’t miss a single kilawatt coming your way.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So its finally over. The Queen thing. She vanished into a hole in the ground at Windsor, but elegantly, electronically, after having the orb and sceptre whipped away for Charlie, and its all over. So the news can revert to being… news, once more and the papers are no longer obliged to keep running ‘royal specials’, ‘regal supplements’ and every photo ever taken of the late Her Maj and some Corgis.

At peak viewing time on Monday, 28 million people in Britain were watching the BBC. Even the Super Bowl would take that. Shame they weren’t selling advertising time but some felt it might be a little inappropriate. In the circumstances. To have a young babe dancing round a box of tampons whilst The Queen was on the Long Walk. Or possibly, “Carling don’t make Royalty, but if they did…”

Thus we can move on. To talk about ‘The Queue’. Because we haven’t heard enough stories about people’s experiences of shuffling along the South Bank for 14 hours and we need more. It reached the point where people were going to Southwark ‘to see the queue’. I mean, FFS. What next, another queue, to see THE queue??

Whilst David Beckham joined the back and did it properly, some celebs chose not to. They went in the ‘back door’ without queuing. Philip Schofield and the rent-a-blond he does breakfast tv with, could be Holly, Fearne, Kate, they’re all interchangeable, has been lambasted for the new crime of ‘NOT QUEUING!’ You don’t have to say which queue, there is only one. ‘But we were working!’, he lamely cried. ‘Reporting on… well, on the unmoving coffin draped in a flag’, so we slithered in the VIP entrance, like fucking snakes!!!

Now we can move back to the economy. Some say that Liz Truss took the opportunity to murder the Queen so she would have 10 days to work out what the fuck she could possibly do with the economy. Otherwise she would have been pressured into making important announcements with insufficient time to calculate her plans. Ok, I haven’t heard too many people make that accusation, just me.

And it sounds like that was 10 days well spent because I’m going to be much richer. She’s taking another 200 billion quid which we don’t have, and giving it to me.

The Queen is dead: long live Liz Truss!

Happy normal (ish) Wednesday

A xxxx

I was 7 years old when Winston Churchill died. I barely knew him. And his was the last state funeral of a similar magnitude to what is happening today. I can’t remember what happened when the Queen Mother died a few years ago, so it couldn’t have been that grand. What passes as ‘low key’ in royal circles. Just 35 horse-drawn carriages and 22,000 soldiers. But Churchill’s was the real deal. Even though he wasn’t a Queen. To our knowledge. And if I’m honest, I’ve never forgiven him.

Because in 1965 there were 2 tv channels. Which, pretty much operated in daylight hours only. So children only had limited options. There was about an hour every weekday at about 4.30 and then there was Saturday mornings. The day they buried Winnie.

So I came down for breakfast and, depending on the time, when the kids stuff was due to start, I would switch on. And instead of terrible puppets whose strings were clearly visible, overly dramatic ‘cliff-hanger’, black’n’white, b-movie type series and a few BBC buffoons dressed as clowns, there was a big black box being pulled down Constitution Hill by lots of horses. There were soldiers. And it was all in slow motion.

“WTF???”, I said to my mother. “Where’s Space Patrol, FFS???? The Woodentops are due on in 5 minutes, what’s all this shit?” Yes, tragically, I swore terribly even at 7. Well, not terribly as much as really proficiently.

And I learned that tv was suspended for the day because of the funeral of an old fat man who I never knew. “But will Pinky and Perky come on later then? Are they at the funeral?”

And thus state funerals represent days of personal tragedy for me. Deprived of the telly wot I wanted to watch. Lila and Joey are coming for lunch today and I shall just tell them its Peppa Pig’s funeral, then they’ll watch it.

Therefore, I chose to do my own, personal ‘reflecting’ on Her Maj whilst in the shower this morning, during my rinse cycle, saying my final farewells, offering her soul all the thanks for being… such a nice Queen and thus liberating myself from having to turn on the tv until 6 o’clock this evening to watch a rockumentary from 1996.

I do ‘get it’ totally. Lovely old woman, only monarch we’ve ever had, charming lady, always proper, devoted to the nation, I get all that. But I’ve ‘ad enough. If I hear one more person say, with teary eyes, that queuing up for 21 hours and being in the room with one dead body and 74 living but non-moving ones for 32 seconds, was ‘the best moment of their lives’ then I shall start a campaign of introducing recreational drugs to the masses.

Happy Burial Day

A xxxx

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about football so near to the Queen’s funeral. They cancelled a couple of matches today for that very reason and I have no wish to be cancelled by anyone. Even the total morons who normally do the cancelling. The hard left diversity mavens so intent on ‘inclusivity’ that they exclude everyone who questions their often laughable dogma.

Anyway, if I can’t talk about football then I’ll talk about Koreans in general and work my way round to Son Heung-Min the long way. Because he needs to be spoken about. Loudly and with pride. If there were 8 hour queues to pay respects to that man, I’d join the end in a minute. Probably regret it 4 hours later, but it would be worth it. To show my appreciation. Of possibly the most undervalued player in the world.

Ok, so Koreans… hmmmm… there’s Kim Jong-Un, obviously, but he’s the wrong Korea, the Northern one. The south is better. Much better. They make Samsung, LG, Kia, Hyundai and Son. He is the captain of South Korea. Not just the football team, but all of it. He’s that good.

And yet, even the good have their ups and downs. Thus did our beloved Sonny find himself sitting on the substitutes bench yesterday when the match started against Leicester, darn the Laine. What????, people questioned, how can you leave out a player of such class, the winner of last year’s ‘golden boot’, no less, just because he hasn’t scored in the first 6 matches of the season??? Are you maaaadddd??

But this is the genius of Antonio Conte, our manager. Son has started every match for 2 years. He’s a constant. His link-up with Harry Kane is beyond the telepathic and enters some Steven King kind of supernatural world. But Conte, now blessed with a third striker, has more options than he had last year. We have Richarlison. The Brazilian who no Spurs fan particularly wanted but are now incredibly pleased he’s here.

But what good could possibly be achieved by leaving Son on the bench??? That’s not going to help him score, is it???

That’s what we all thought. Which is why Antonio earns 5 million quid a year, and we don’t.

Son came on yesterday with the score a rather precarious 3-2 up, as either Leicester showed themselves better than expected or our defence was shit. And then, in the space of just 13 minutes, the score had moved to 6-2, with Sonny scoring the hat trick.

And these were not ‘tap-ins’, this was no ugly Haaland moment of brutality and luck, no. This was pure class. The first a wonderstrike. The second possibly even better. Both scored with different feet, making it even more spectacular. The third was part saved on the way in, but don’t let that detract from the run and movement arriving at that moment.

Conte is a footballing genius, there is no doubt. But Sonny…

I just love him.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a lot of ‘reflection’ going on today. And yesterday. Will be tomorrow. Definitely Monday. Everyone’s favourite, go-to, pop-psychological word has, in just 10 days, gone from a term used infrequently on a therapist’s couch to being the guiding concept to help us through our trauma over the death of a very old lady. Charles had a day of ‘reflection’ with the body. Everyone is queuing up for their 5 seconds of allotted ‘reflection’ with the coffin. The news is full of it, the papers riddled with it. There is so much reflection occurring that I’m wearing sunglasses full time now. Polarised ones. Because no-one is ‘thinking’ any more. No-one is pondering, considering, remembering or deliberating. We’re all fucking ‘reflecting’.

So I want to take a moment here to do some reflecting of my own. Because it is terrible when things die. We are forced to consider what those things meant to us, directly or indirectly, the effect of their stopping and how we feel about it.

Thus with Roger Federer announcing the death of his professional career. He retired this week as he feels his 41 year-old body simply can’t compete any longer. Welcome to my world, Rog. Yet as I reflect…

He entered the public eye (this pair anyway) when he first won Wimbledon as a gawky Swiss nerdy dude with a pony tail and a Robin Williams smile. But there was something about him when he played which was just a bit ‘different’. He never looked athletic. Never powerful or butch or aggressive, but he played with a style which was amazingly pleasing on the eye. So the sponsors got involved, as they do, lopped off the pony tail, made him the ultimate gentleman, gave him a white blazer and a stupid ‘RF’ logo so they could sell more merchandise. And he went on winning. And winning. And winning. Just in a much more ‘corporate’ way. But what never changed was the elegance of his play. The beautiful style. The almost balletic way he moved to the ball. The absolute, text-book perfection of every shot made.

There’ll be players who win more slams. There’ll be players who annihilate opposition more convincingly. Tennis will undoubtedly continue. But there probably won’t ever be another who plays with such beauty. It’s now all about power and pace and 6 foot 7 East European serving machines.

And talking of style, David Beckham, in case there was any doubt, is an uber-mensch. A man among men. He queued for 11 hours yesterday to see the Queen. Just stood in line, spoke to people, I’m guessing there were a few selfies involved, and he paid his respects, 11 hours later.

This man sits at football matches with Princes. He joins royals on sporting committees. He knows everybody. Yet chose to just stand in line, rather than make what would have been a simple call to just get a ticket. Which was the path taken by the MPs, who all were happy to invoke their privilege rather than act like all the people they represent in parliament and just queue up.

Which is why we love David Beckham and all MPs are tossers who prove, time and again, how out of touch with ‘normal people’ they really are.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

… the tough get queuing.

Every nation has its main strategy for coping with tragedy. Some beat chests, others have public wailing session, the Russians do what they’re told to do, the Americans promise gun control, Eskimos put another log on the fire, the French surrender, East Europeans join neo-nazi organisations, and the British queue. And they do so in an orderly, polite, genteel, good-natured way.

Though queuing is not so much a ‘strategy’ as a ‘way of life’. A cultural hobby. Practised regularly so that when you really need it, like NOW!!, its easy. Most Brits will see a queue and just join the end. Why not? Must be queuing for something, I’ll give it a go.

But the queues now, to view the lying in state of our dear departed previous monarch, are quite frankly, the queues of dreams. You can queue for an hour to check out at Tescos. Two hours for a flight. Three hours at passport control. Four hours to get through to any big company on the phone, being told ‘your call is important to us… just not really important enough to take, right now’. You want tickets for a concert? Five hours.

The queues to ‘see the Queen’ have reached 24 hours. They were 9 hours by Thursday night, 14 by this afternoon and then they actually stopped the queue because they’d run out of bits of Southwark to hold the queuers. People got pissed off. Can you imagine coming down from Scotland on a coach for 19 hours, getting the tube over to Tower Bridge, finding Southwark Park, only to be told you can’t queue? Well, you can, but only to buy a ticket home. What would the Queen have thought? Appalling.

So they opened up the lines and its now a whole day.

I’m waiting til its at least 36 hours before I join it. For Her Maj, I wanna KNOW I’ve been queuing.

Happy viewing in State

A xxxx

Its different for us plebs. My poor old dad died at 3pm on a Wednesday and was buried 10.30 on the Friday, almost 2 days later. I’d suggested taking him up to Edinburgh, but ‘he wouldn’t have wanted that’. Having no connection to that City whatsoever. And, to be honest, I don’t think that many Scotsmen would have filed passed to pay their respects, however worthy he was. Then he’d have to be flown back to London, hearsed round the East End for a bit, like some latter-day Kray, and then taken ‘home’ to lie in state (and not a very pleasant state, if you think about it), until the funeral. They did ask me, the Home Office, if I wanted the day of dad’s interment to be a bank holiday, but ‘he wouldn’t have wanted that’. Because he’d have known that the last thing we need here, in our nation on its knees with economic woes, deep in debt and underperforming on all levels, is another day of zero productivity, cancelled medical procedures and excessive drinking by the majority of the population.

So we all attribute things to the deceased pretty much to suit us. I’m supposed to say prayers every night for a year. But I don’t. Because my dad really ‘wouldn’t have wanted that’. Almost as much as I really don’t want that. But there’s the positive version too. When the assholes at in English football unilaterally decided to cancel a weekend’s games, everyone stated how Her Maj loved sport, how she would have loved the matches to go on. It becomes very difficult to second guess a person who can no longer make the first guess. Almost unfair. So we guess for them, on the basis that ‘they’d have wanted that’.

Thus: would either my dad, or Her Majesty of blessed memory and many jewels, have wanted me to stand in line along the south side of the River, for 37 hours in the pouring rain, just for the totally historic, once in a generational chance to… spend my allotted 8 seconds looking at a wooden box through a window whilst being jostled by a school group from Cleethorpes and a tour party from Gdansk? I don’t really think anyone would want that at all.

Happy Mourning Wednesday

A xxxx

There’s been no change in the Queen’s condition, unfortunately, so plans for the funeral are ploughing ahead. Her body was moved from Balmoral to Edinburgh yesterday at suitably funerial speed. Her Maj will spend a couple of days in Scotland’s capital, even though the fringe is over. And then she’ll ‘come’ to London where she’ll hold her final audiences with the British public, plus any random, odds-an-sods tourists who fancy being “part of ‘istry, innit” and join the queue. For four days will she lay and the length of her laying will be four days. There will be no queue jumping, nor drunk behaviour. Which will rule out me (queue jumper par excellence) and half the British public (drunk most of the time).

Yet for that Queen, I may choose to visit and pay my respects. Even if I have to queue for 3 days, that is a small price to pay for… well, because… errrr…

Ok, I’m not queuing. Unless they have a visitors’ book. Then I’m in. But what shall I go as? Should I dress as the Queen? With a white wig and crown and 2 Corgis? Or maybe go in the guise of Freddie Mercury or Danny La Rue? Because turning up in jeans and t-shirt is pretty much unacceptable. And if that t-shirt has any kind of political slogan upon it, you shall be banned forthwith. Its in the rules, along with the drunk thing and pushing-in. So Jeremy Corbyn will NOT be welcomed there because his very face is a political statement and as well as being totally undesirable in any situation, you kind’a think that anti-monarchist, Republican Trotskyite tossers in general should be prevented from even looking at Her Maj’s coffin. The only acceptable positioning of Corbyn and coffin is with him inside it. Not with the Queen, obvs, I meant, his own coffin…

And then next Monday will be the final parade. Doesn’t matter if she’s in an open topped car, they can’t kill her again. And it will, very slowly, go round parts of London until it reaches, other parts of London. Followed by Charles, on foot, no less (because no-one cares if he gets shot) until it reaches Westminster Abbey for a long and drawn-out service whilst everyone in the country, on our extra Bank Holiday, will be in the pub.

Long live the King.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

So football decided, in a fit of FOMO on Thursday, to cancel all football matches this weekend. If I’m honest, I can live without it. Just for one weekend. No more. But then one needs to question: why? What is the purpose of cancelling a hundred games of football, all of which will need playing later in the season when it all gets jammed up with European football (Spurs), lesser European football (Arsenal), the World fucking Cup in Qatar (3 weeks in winter during the busy schedule) and anything else that may happen in between. But that’s just looking at it from a footballing perspective.

The other side of the issue is that, unlike in cricket, rugby, horse-racing and all other nice, sensibly-led sports, football appears to be run by assholes. Who have deprived their paying customers the right to demonstrate their sorrow. A minute’s silence, or even (as it was the Queen) 2 minutes, is incredibly powerful at a stadium filled with 20, 30, 50 thousand fans, all of whom are noisy even when they’re not singing their songs or racially abusing players. Silence is a potent symbol at football matches, and now there’ll be no opportunity to make that gesture.

Next weekend has become very difficult too, because the funeral is on Monday so thousands of police are needing to be redeployed to protect Her Majesty and make sure Albanians don’t steal her body to sell to Chinese collectors. And therefore won’t be available to police matches on Sunday, if not Saturday too.

So a brief message to Richard Masters, the CEO of the Premier League, and to David Baldwin, CEO of the football league: you fucked up.

People seem to be worried that Charles will continue ‘interfering’ in politics. Green issues, farming stuff, he’s always been engaged. Yet said himself in his first ever kingly speech that he now has to act like a King, not a semi-green adulterous crop-junky. He will be reigned in. (That’s a serious pun which I hope you enjoy. Especially as it originally appeared merely as a consequence of my almost-dyslexic shit spelling.)

Happy day 4 of the new King

A xxxx

When the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs died, they were never buried alone. Oh no. A few wives went in there with him, all his pets, favourite horse, a camel, mother-in-law, which is why they needed really big crypts. Because the mother-in-law was immense. (I think we need to re-kindle the whole ‘mother-in-law’ joke thing for these more sensitive, aware, caring times. And because ‘mothers-in-law’ don’t have a union, a support group, legal protection as a ‘minority’ or even a ‘diversity’, we are free to attack them mercilessly. Whilst we still can.)

The message was one of grief. The wives simply ‘couldn’t go on without him!’ due to their grief and sorrow. Life meant nothing without the guv’nor. Whereas the reality was that she’d been shagging her way through the armed guard for a decade and was looking forward to the new cadets.

Other civilisations adopted penance and suffering as ways of expressing their sorrow of death. As if the only way to deal with the death of a loved one is to make yourself suffer. Which, when you think about it, is stupid. You are suffering. Grief hurts. There’s no need for blood to feel pain. And would your dead loved-one want you to suffer more? A Pharaoh might but not a normal, nice person. In some societies they beat chests and wail as they follow the coffin to its final parking space.

But generally, in Western society, we no longer adopt such a coping strategy. And yet, the need to suffer and being seen to suffer is a lingering cultural expectation. Thus, we must all suffer, just a little, to mourn the passing of our Queen. So they’ve cancelled the fucking football this weekend. Yeah, let’s add more tragedy. Good idea. But God moves in mysterious ways, so arranging it so that Spurs visit to Manchester City is postponed might not be seen by all as a ‘bad thing’.

I saw this photo in the paper yesterday and wanted to ‘share’. It was the Queen visiting Pakistan in 1961. In an open-topped Cadillac. 2 years later Kennedy was shot dead riding through Dallas in a similar mode and for some reason, that method of nobility parading around simply stopped.

Happy mourning

A xxxx