Andy's Glasses

I love this picture. Ok, I love all photos of ‘the kids’, as you may have, kind’a, noticed. But this represents a dramatic (?) reconstruction of the famous ‘Lord and Lady Muck’ situation in which they’re sitting at opposite ends of a massive, stately-home dining table and one asks t’other for the marmalade. Neither of my grandchildren eat marmalade, and certainly not a dinner time (we have standards!!!), though Joey might spread some on his sausages, just because… its what kids do. Our ‘stately home’ has a west facing garden. So by the end of the day, the sunlight pours in. And seriously affects the picture quality of cartoons on an iPad. Thus they HAVE to sit in shaded regions. Because too many reflections on Peppa Pig is simply unacceptable. So now ya know. We only separate them otherwise to avoid bloodshed.

The Commonwealth Games opened last night. For the first time ever, there are more women’s events than men’s. Which I’m hoping just means more beach volleyball. Or perhaps the men should just start identifying as women and get more medals. But if they do, they’ll no longer be able to use the Tavistock Clinic for their gender reassignment. They’ve been shut down. Ok, not exactly ‘shut down’, they still do lots of good work for troubled kids, but they no longer have exclusive rights to pander to the whims of slightly confused pre-pubescents (and find me one’o them who ain’t confused and I’ll buy you a jock-strap with matching bra) and ‘some might say’, almost encourage them to consider gender dysmorphia and possibly transitioning into something that more suits Sir or Madam or both’s feelings at the moment, perhaps?

It’s not like the Tavistock actively advertised for troubled kids and gave them puberty-delaying meds and actively encouraged them to think that just because you were born with testicles does NOT mean you have to live your life as a mere man. It’s just that the whole ethos of the place did emit a whole vibe of encouragement and appeasement rather than more impartiality in its suggestions to a really vulnerable group of permanently confused individuals. And thus, the clinic has lost its total monopoly of gender problematic kids. In fact its lost its right to treat them totally, in favour of many other options. Which must be a good thing.

For the rest of the Commonwealth Games, the theme is ‘Birmingham’. Strangulated, drawn-out vowel-sounds are the way forward as Lenny Henry, Simon le-fuckin-Bon and half of Black Sabbath were wheeled out to show that, as well as a history ripe with heavy industry, they have a cultural side too. Not that you’d know that by listening to Duran Simon last night, but trust me, they have.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

We can’t put it off any longer. We NEED to have the women’s football conversation. England have now reached the final, beating Sweden last night in a wipeout 4-nil win over the pretty hot favourites (that’s ‘pretty’ as in ‘fairly’, rather than ‘cute’, although some of them were) to win the tournament. Therefore we need to take this seriously. Something that, for reasons we might (or might not) get to, has proven somewhat difficult for me during the preceding rounds of the tournament.

I even watched some of last night’s match. Ok, the last 10 minutes, but its not a duration competition, FFS, I actually watched some of a match and it was pretty (?) good.

I emphatically love football and I totally love women. So what’s the problem? Well, I love red wine and I love gardening too, but I wouldn’t necessarily mix those either, although thinking about it… Sorry. Women’s football. Focus.

Devotees of the Premier League are privileged to watch the best football in the world. Week after week, year after year. And the league is full of amazing skills and fabulous movement between players and all manner of great things, wonderful things. Unless you’re an Arsenal fan, obviously. But it becomes the norm, raises the bar and creates an unrealistic expectation, even among those of us who played the game for years, to not quite such a high standard, that ‘all football must look like that’.

Then you turn on in a moment of weakness to watch Luton Town play Shrewsbury on a Tuesday night in February and you suddenly appreciate how brilliant, how elegant, how non-industrial our Premier League really is. And the women’s football is no doubt skilful and delightful but its simply not ‘at that level’. Not yet. Possibly never, depending on whether you’re a gender judgmentalist cave-man or a equal opportunity unrealist.

So I have to enter a different mind-set when I watch (as I will on Sunday for the final) women’s football. Turn off the ‘premier expectation’ app and hit the ‘other games’ module instead. And then you’ll be able to appreciate the woman’s game, not for what it isn’t, which is the man’s game, but for what it is on its own terms. Which is 22 fairly fit and gorgeous babes bouncing round in shorts and tight shirts waggling their pony tails. Obviously I mean that in the most non-objectifying way possible.

Why do they all have pony-tails? Is it a league requirement? And why are they all dyed blonde? Zlatan Ibrahimovic never dyed his. I think they need to get a bit more creative, hair-wise and channel their inner Jack Grealish. He knows more about hair adornments than MichaelJohn.

So now I’m on board. England in a final. Any England. Any sport. Gotta be worth a roar.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Rishi Sunak’s team made a plan. It went like this: no more Mr Nice Guy! No more smooth and slick, everyone hates that. Bare your fucking teeth and go totally pit-bull out there! He was pulling at his lead before Sophie Raworth said ‘good evening’.

Liz Truss opted for a calmer, more measured, more ‘zen’ kind of approach, pop a couple of Valium before it goes live and lose the wooden attitude. Limber up. And limber she was. Or did. Whatever.

Both debaters received instructions from the Conservative party beforehand. Advising them to ‘repair’ recent damage to the party. Don’t descend into slagging each other off, don’t pick, don’t fight, don’t shout, don’t swear, no knives or knuckle-dusters. Present Conservatives as good, decent people. Always a difficult ask.

Which in fact proved impossible as the debate started. Rishi interrupted, intervened, over-shouted, blabbered on, attacked every word, left Liz no time to speak and basically bullied his way through. Because someone told him beforehand that he’s too smooth and needs to appear more ‘forceful’ or ‘dominant’, to try and overcome the overall impression of weedy, geeky, nerdy, rather creepy little man. So he became the class bully. He was, in fact, I thought, rather rude. You can disagree with an opponent’s view, but let her finish the sentence, FFS.

So there was Rishi, red in face and foam on his lips, emitting spittle with every shout, scream and cry, and there was Liz, cool as ya like, replying calmly and evenly, with a half-smile, holding an umbrella for the spray.

There were policies spoken about too, apparently. Tax and stuff. But quite frankly I was more concerned with their manner, their attitudes, their deportment.

Did either of them epitomise ‘prime minister’? I’m not sure. All I know is, after last night, I like her much more than I did previously and I don’t like him, much more than I didn’t like him previously.

And round 2 is tonight. I think I’ll take a walk/clean the car/water the garden/do a jigsaw puzzle.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m a official penshoner. Therefore, I can moan. It’s what’s expected of me. When I was 65 it wasn’t allowed but now its mandatory. And not just to moan, but in fact to re-moan. Which is being miserable specifically about Brexit. Which I have been since the votes were counted. Albeit illegally because I wasn’t getting me pension then.

But I’ve been waiting for a few years now to see these alleged Brexit benefits. In fact, to see just one benefit. Getting an email the other day from UPS querying an invoice for goods coming from France. From a company for whom they’ve been delivering consistently since January 1st 2021. It asked me to ‘give the value for the 0.00 priced goods’. As in, there were spectacle frames, charged, and cases and cloths, zero.

So why UPS suddenly need to query something that they’ve encountered hundreds or thousands of times previously, and how they can actually ask: ‘how much is something which costs nothing?’ I think counts as a Brexit benefit. Along with all the other vat bollocks which we now have to try and demystify every month.

Along with looking forward to buying visas for trips to Berlin, Paris, Rome and… other European places. And no longer using UK phone allowances over there too. They’re big benefits.

Queuing half way down the M2 because the French are the most annoyingly obstructive nation in the world is another benefit. Because before Brexit they had no cause to ‘make un point’ and now they do. Stroppy fuckers.

But the real benefits are, as promised, the 315 million pounds a day going into the NHS! Which is brilliant and precisely why our health service is working in such a fantastically efficient manner with no staff issues whatsoever now that all the Europeans have left. I’m not sure whether the departure of GPs from active service can be blamed on Brexit but we might as well throw it in there. Along with the 2 year waits for routine operations because the hospitals are having to take up the immense slack of the sick folk the GPs no longer see. There’s no-one to pick crops and restaurants are replacing horrible east European staff with horrible British staff, when they can find them. Otherwise its self-service all the way.

So I’m converted. Brexit was the best idea since… giving Prince Andrew a passport. The finest since… Hitler became chancellor in 1933. Or Boris becoming PM in 2018.

Ok, I’ve remoaned, I feel better now.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

What’s happened to the French? Ok, they’ve never been ‘nice’ in any way, we wouldn’t expect that, barely even ‘decent’ in most cases. But they’ve always been good at certain other things, other than nastiness, snooty attitudes, surrendering, misplaced sense of superiority and winning the odd World Cup. They have always been obsessive bureaucrats, which is why that’s a French world. They invented it. And along with bureaucracy comes organisational expectations, the basic structure behind the obsessive demands.

And yet twice in a very short time, the French have shown all the organisational skills of Norman Wisdom. All the logical, box-ticking thoroughness of Joey.

First was this year’s Champions League final fiasco. In which the most shambolic lack of preparation resulted in Liverpool fans going through hell, being herded, locked outside the ground, sprayed with tear-gas and abused. And the authorities in Paris had the outright chutzpah to blame those Liverpool fans. Who, it must be said, are not without their history, but in this instance were completely innocent. The ‘inquiry’ later exonerated the fans and accepted responsibility… ish. In a very French way. Je regret rien. And it all stems from cowardice. They were so prepared for Liverpool fans to behave… well, like Liverpool fans in Europe, that they totally over-reacted when they didn’t. And basically ‘pulled the trigger’ at the first line of ‘vous jamais marchez seuls’.

Then yesterday was ‘Tossergate deux’. The schools broke up so all those children got systematically loaded into the back of VW Sharans, given an iPad, a juice box and a colouring book, for the trip down to Dover. To France!!! To Holiday!!!

That was the plan. Because in the remains of our European membership, we have French customs over here, in Dover. So you check onto your ferry and when you arrive in Calais to visit the refugee centres, you can just drive away. And yesterday morning, arguably the first day of the busiest holiday weekend of the year, instead of having the 14 French border guards there to find undesirables, aliens and terrorists, there were only 6. The other 8 were still in bed with their mistresses, eating croissants or surrendering to some unseen army. A situation which caused 8 hour delays. By which time, the iPads had run out of charge, the colouring books completed and the juice boxes long empty, most into the back of the car along with a few wee-wees and other undesirable stuff.

So we need to know what’s the French for ‘couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery’. Because it would appear that under Macron’s leadership, they actually couldn’t.

Happy Samedi

A xxxx

I bought Joey a new toy. I think he was fed up with building blocks, plastic dinosaurs, planes and helicopters. His mother won’t let him have any guns and I’m fairly sure she never let him have the lovely, colour-coordinated set of fabulous throwing knives I bought him last Christmas. So I got him this. Ok, I got me this but he saw the box it arrived in and, with that wonderful lack of procrastination or delay that children drive you insane with, we had to put it together NOW!!! And then it needed testing. So who’s gonna test it??? Suffice to say: the garden hose with regular spray attachment is now so far ‘yesterday’s toy’ that’s its not worth ever unplugging the new, all-powered up high pressure jet. “Yes Joey, of course you can bring it into the house to clean the tv…and I think your grandmother might need a wash too…”

Yet its a positive thing that his parents don’t gender stereotype the boy. If I can still say ‘boy’? He does self-identify as such so that should appease those of a more sensitive nature. So we let him play with Lila’s dolls and he decapitates them. I suggested we enrol him in ‘wife beater classes for the under 5s’ as he has such a natural inclination in that direction that I’d hate it to be one of those ‘talents we missed’ moments in his later life. I was thrown out of the house.

Yet you can’t help but wonder about the nature of ‘gender’. I’ve conducted an extensive study (Lila AND Joey) for 5 (and 3) years now. And Lila remains a ‘girly girl’ in every single way. She likes pink, love hair ties, bows, clips, ribbons and make up. She does ballet, mixes predominantly with the girls at her school and is learning to become wily, manipulative, provocative and at times nasty. All very feminine characteristics. She does play football. Which I feel is a conversation for another day, with the World Cup for Ladies (apparently) dominating our lives at the moment. Unless its finished. Couldn’t tell you.

Joey likes breaking things. Hitting things. He likes damage, pissing anywhere he gets the urge and acting like a football hooligan without the singing. All very male traits. Well they used to be. Now they’re just ‘traits of a neutral variety’.

But this apparent difference may NOT just be down to chromosomes, we can still blame the parents for unconscious gender assignment and other examples of terrible parenting.

Its a minefield. I’ll help you navigate through it. Like Princess Diana! But with a nob.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Ok, the heatwave’s over, but its not so much the heat that bothered me as the endless fucking conversations about the heat. Even as an avid collector of trivial, useless information, I’ve learned enough about ‘record temperatures’ and trends in temperature rises and fires and global warming to last… til the next heatwave. Then they won’t need to repeat any of it because we all know. And carbon emissions are to blame, there’s very little doubt, so, according to Mr Evangelical News Carbon Dude, ‘we’ must do all ‘we’ can to reduce ‘our’ emissions, end the reliance on fossil fuels and generally act responsibly in the best interests of the planet.

And I get that. It’s the ‘we’ that causes me slight concern. I’ll heat the house less, I’ll insulate, I’ll drive an electric car, if it ever arrives, which all helps. In the same way that spitting every weekend into the reservoir will help the water supply. Because there’s industry. And there’s cows (massive producers of methane gas, the worst of the greenhouse ones). And there’s planes. And…

And there’s China. India. America. The ‘producers’. The abusers. The Problem. The 3 biggest industrial nations on the planet, other than Russia who also put out a CO2 or two, have no intention of any immediate or even long-term strategy for carbon emission reduction. China alone produces 30% of the world’s emissions. Who’s going to stop that? India is poor and completely reliant on coal, which is a massive resource over there. And America… well, they adopt the same attitude to fossil fuels as they do to gun control. It’s the way its always been, it ain’t gonna change. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, blah, blah, John Wayne, Donald Trump, blah.

Maybe our little heatwave was a warning of things to come, to spur us into action. Because, even for a heat-loving sun-worshipper, the last 2 days were fucking awful. So I’ll turn off my gas boiler if China turns off its one. Or two. Or…

Happy mercifully a little cooler Wednesday

A xxxx

We’re almost becoming used to living in disasters. We’ve (nearly… almost… possibly) survived covid, we’re on the brink of war with Russia (the first tank to extend its turret anywhere near Estonia, Poland, Lithuania…), the petrol required to get to the Fat Duck now costs more than the meal you eat when you get there, because the electric car you ordered last November won’t be ready til May, sorry, make that July, oh, no, now its September… probably, and although no-one is heating their homes today, by January half the nation will be bankrupt for doing it then. And bathing their children in frigid rivers.

But today I learned of the ultimate of disasters, about to descend on a vulnerable, limping world. Hummus-gate!!!

There is a world shortage of chick peas. Which is a shame because half the third world uses them as a staple. But this isn’t about them. This is about ME. And hummus. Which is made of chick peas. Which, sod’s bloody law, come from… Russia. Who, in a normal year, would export 250,000 tons of them but not this year. I would approach the Prime Minister to make chick peas an exception to the sanctions, but we don’t have a Prime Minister currently. And I’m not sure my hummus supply (quarter of a pot, Waitrose Reduced Fat) will last til September. Nor would those unfeeling tossers vying for the top job give Hummus a consideration when there’s so many, non-edible, alternative issues to consider. Important ones. Like how trans people choose to identify. That’s much more important than feeding half the starving world!!

There’s felafel to consider too, you know, more chick peas. There’s more to life than just hummus. It’s just that hummus is so much more important than almost everything else. Including peace in Ukraine and which dirty no-good low-life occupies 10 Downing Street. This is something worth fighting for!

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I just hung a wash out on the spinny washing line thingy in the garden. Because I’m a good boy. In fact, because I’m a bad boy generally so sometimes I’m prepared to score a few points, get them in the bank, for when they’re needed. Which is most of the time. And it was an interesting study. As I realised that I don’t wear any clothes. Mel wears loads. I hung up four dresses (hers, mine are different colours), yet only 3 of my t-shirts, all white. I did hang up lots of my underpants because in the hot weather I can wear up to 3 pairs a day. Though I do find that uncomfortable under jeans and generally stick to the one. Mel wears sleep-shirts and I wear nothing. There was lots of her underwear too, obviously, as we both wear that. I stood back and calculated that of that wash, about 15% was ‘my shit’, the rest hers. Which made me so upset, I took it all down again for her to do when she gets back from swimming.

And a little plea, as the heatwave is right upon us. Please, but PLEASE don’t drink too much water. Because if you do then water levels will plummet, as they always do when its even warm, and there’ll be a hose-pipe ban and I won’t be able to water my lawn. Which will then go all brown and horrible and completely upset the aesthetic. So please, as you go for the tap because you’re chronically dehydrated, the world’s spinning, your skin’s cracking up, you’re burning like a barbecue, have a thought for my grass. And drink a bit less. Don’t be so selfish.

To compensate for losing the rugby series against England, they let an Aussie win the golf, which was played somewhere in Scotland, I’m guessing. And such an Aussie. They found a guy, probably in a trailer park in Queensland, who actually still has a mullet hair-do, and taught him to play golf so he could be ‘an ambassador’ for the sport, a representative of the country in the quality of Sir Les Patterson. This guy looks like the semi-moronic brother of Paul Hogan in his comedy show. Though even I have to admit, he knows how to hit a golf ball.

More pre-Prime-Minister-bollocks last night and, as expected, its getting dark and dirty in there. I missed the debate. I was pouring 3000 gallons of water onto my back garden.

Happy VERY HOT Monday

A xxxx

It’s hot. So hot that I played tennis at 9 this morning, rather than 10. These are not normally considerations. Play early because rain is coming. Play late so the frost can melt. Play at 12.32 because Hurricane Rishi will have passed. But heat? We love heat. And sunshine? Travel round the world chasing the stuff. Well, Mel does, I just go for the ice creams. So why all the fuss?

Because sunshine, as well as making you feel great, infuse you with vitamin D, put a colour on your face and increase well-being, will kill you. I heard yesterday that even sitting in the shade in 40 degrees of Celsius (as we’re predicted to have by Tuesday), you can just die. Like that. One minute you’re alive and the next you’ve dehydrated, your organs have shut down and the paramedics aren’t allowed out because their tyres have melted.

The solution, as to everything, is water, of course. Preferably, getting in it. But if you can’t, like… on the tube f’rinstance, then try drinking some. I know, its the least drinkable stuff on the planet, the most uninteresting, dull, horrible drink to imbibe, lacking in sugar, alcohol, coffee and all the other things that improve it 9000%, but that’s what you have to do. To stay alive.

On our world tour of Australia, back in 2011, we went to Oluru. Ayers Rock was shut. And we decided to walk round it. Well its a great big fucking rock, you weren’t allowed to climb it because it was too hot and your options are a bit limited. You can’t just look at it for 3 hours. It is a 6-mile trek and it was 39 degrees of Celsius. With not the slimmest, slightest sliver of shade available. Because its in the middle of a desert and stands alone. And our friends made us carry water. Lots of water. Like trekking 6 miles in 120 degrees (change to Farenheits to hit the big numbers) isn’t hard enough, strap gallon sacks of water on your backs just for fun. Which was quite frankly ridiculous because water is heavy (1 litre weighs precisely 1Kg which everyone knows unless they’re American) so gallons of the stuff weighs tons. Which makes you exert more, sweat more and is generally counterproductive to staying alive.

So here’s the rules, to keep you safe in the heatwave.

1. Avoid the shade, according to that guy, you can die there.
2. Don’t carry water, the added weight is unnecessary exertion.
3. Use nothing stronger than factor 15 otherwise your tan might be blotchy.
4. Leave small children in the car when you go shopping to avoid sun exposure. And make sure the windows are closed so they don’t crawl out.

Otherwise, good luck amigos, see you on the other side. Which is Wednesday.

Happy heatwave

A xxxx