Andy's Glasses

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

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, has died. Did you hear? Possibly not. If you were buried in a hole in the garden with no sound available and limited WiFi, you may have missed it. Otherwise, you already know and thus have started your very own outpouring of grief, sorrow and despair. If you’re a foreigner or tourist you’ll already be outside Buckingham Palace, camping on the pavement in the pissing down rain, as part of a vast crowd of mourners and monarchists who don’t know (the tourists) and don’t care (the monarchists) that the demised monarch is in fact in Edinburgh. Possibly, its just a symbolic gesture, and possibly because they’re too mean to get on a train to Scotland to do it properly.

The Queen was reaching the end of her long, dedicated and exceptionally wonderful life, so they called up, among others, Andrew and Meghan and when she learned they were coming, she chose what we’d all do in those circumstances and rushed off to the Palace in the Sky. Given a choice between Prince Andrew and the Angel of Death, we’d all do the same.

And thus we need all learn the lyrics to our new national anthem. God Save The Person With a Crown. To allow for future pronoun issues. Although on all emails from Her Majesty, her pronouns of choice were always ‘one, one’s, one’.

Prince Charles has been promoted to King Charles. Camilla is taking over temporarily as Queen whilst William is caretaker manager of Wales. In the royal re-shuffle.

Charles was given the option of his kingly name. Ok, Charles would have been a shoe-in, so you’d think. But royals do it different. He could have used any of his names. And he has many. Because previous king Charles-es have not done very well. The first beheaded for treason and the second exiled for most of his life. But Charlie chose Charlie. On the principle of third time lucky.

Tomorrow I shall track every moment of Elizabeth’s life, from the first photo with a dummy in her mouth (gold one) and nappies (hand-woven silk), through the years. Oh, sorry, every newspaper has already done that. Almost as if the obits were already written and ready!!!

The Queen is brown bread. Long live the plonker.

Happy, but sad, Friday

A xxxx

The women won the European Championships and it was the best thing ever for women’s football. Not for football in general (read: men’s football), because in that respect it was fairly meaningless. It was a different game. But in politics, they all play the same game. And in keeping with the football-led theme of the year, there’s a gel in charge this time.

Liz Truss hasn’t gone to 10 Downing Street to do the ironing. She’s gone there to save the world. Well, to save my world: England. Scotland, Wales, Ireland? They’re on their own. Liz has come to save ME. I’d be happy if she just concentrated on London, really, but appreciate all that Boris-talk of ‘levelling up’ and ‘red walls’ and stuff must enter into her plans somewhere.

And I think I’m fairly alone, in my house at least, of feeling pretty good about Liz taking the helm. I like her. She’s no looker but you don’t enter politics because you’re gorgeous. You’d get a proper, important job, like being an influencer. But she has ideas. Big ideas. Which she’s going to need because other than during a war, there has never been a worst time to take charge of this country. Everything’s gone to shit, is going deeper that way, and toilet paper is fast becoming unaffordable.

But Liz is a woman. I’m allowed to making passing reference to that without offending too many. And thus she wants to spend her way out of the crisis. The political version of “I know we have no food in the house and you don’t get paid til next Tuesday but I just bought a handbag on eBay cos it was only 320 quid”.

And yet she really has no choice. We either look at ‘bail outs’ or we’ll be looking at total economic disaster for 90% of the population as the energy prices soar higher than any American rocket (much, much higher in that case) and inflation continues to cause constant increases in all other prices.

Yet she has a bottom up approach to restructuring. Cut taxes. A move the Kier Starmers of this world (and thank God there’s only one or we’d all be dying of boredom) simply love to hate. But it actually makes sense. Reduce taxes, increase the nation’s productivity (which is horrendously low, currently) and worry about the rest later. Because if the nation prospers, we all prosper.

But even that is relatively long term because gas prices go up next month and people need to feel secure right now. So tomorrow she’ll announce the help package. Rumoured to be in the region of 100 billion pounds. That’s a ‘1’ followed by 11 zeroes. And in maths, zeroes really don’t mean ‘nothing’. By this morning that figure had casually been raised to 150 billion. At which point even the most inured to these ridiculous figures has to have a ‘WTF???’ moment. I can remember when a 50-pound note made me feel rich. It still does, in fact.

So good luck Liz. I’m with you all the way. And starting with a Cabinet almost devoid of ‘rich old white men’, I’m feeling confident. But why break that with Jacob Rees-Mogg FFS?

The future starts… TODAY!!!! (Just like it always does, but bigger)

A xxxx