Andy's Glasses

All I can say is: thank God for the ‘ammers.

Because otherwise I’d have absolutely nothing at all to be happy about in the entire world of football. Yet those ‘chirpy cockneys’ put a smile on my face with every game they lose, and every move they make downwards in the table.

I think when Donald Trump sends ‘the boys’ over to get Kier Starmer, I might ask him to take Thomas Frank as well. If there’s room on the plane with all those soldiers and guns and stuff. That way we won’t have to make yet another obscene payment for sacking yet another failed manager.

But I watched yesterday’s match through my analytical eyes. I studied the stats. I calculated every move, pass and run of my team. I performed several statistical tests on the results, then cross-checked them on a multiple chai-squared distribution matrix. And the result that the computer came out with was rather surprising. It was “15.9814”.

Oh, you’re not familiar with advanced multi-dimensional mathematics then. Well, a score of 15.9814 means… they were shit. That intersected on the vertical axis with ‘boring as fuck’. To be honest, you don’t have to be an actuary to know that. It was so plainly obvious. We lack… pretty much everything except defence. Our back four I’m quite happy with. At the moment they seem to score most of our goals as well. The rest? Ok, Bentancur is ‘solid’, Gray shows ‘promise’, Pahlinha is strong, but that really bolsters the defence. It does nothing to make us look ‘pretty’. Look ‘exiting’. Look even ‘good’. We’re just tragically mediocre in the attacking half of the field. Barely competent.

Ok, we have injuries. But we’ve bought a lot of players. All tragically underwhelming or, to be fair (something I try to avoid), ‘works in progress’. Like Lucas Bergvald and Archie Gray. Our most exiting player is Kudus, and he’s declined massively since he joined us not very long ago. Its called ‘Madison syndrome’. Though there are many symptoms in common with ‘Spurs syndrome’.

To make matters (much) worse, Arsenal undeservedly won against simply awesome Bournemouth. A team who never look ‘scared’, are never intimidated, who are always ‘up for it’. However all that’s great, but winning would have been possibly better. With Manchester City squandering 2 points at the death against Chelsea, that leaves the Arse sitting pretty. And no-one wants that. Let some horrible northern team sit at the crest of the league, let them give joy in areas where, quite frankly, they have NOTHING else going for them. Like Liverpool. And now they’ve lost their footballing glory too.

Man United sacked their manager today. Be Liverpool next. Well, he’s only won ONE league title in… well, a year, but is that good enough? Really?

Sam Allardyce can only be in one place at one time.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The youth of today…

Well, let’s face it, they’re fucked. If AI doesn’t get them, they’ve suffered covid and are all addicted to ‘devices’. Most are more ‘hardware’ than human. But apparently the problem is because they don’t take ‘Saturday jobs’. So they get no experience of the discipline and basic interactional skills which work entails and engenders. Otherwise you get sacked.

My brother got himself a Saturday job when he was about 14. He went into a local electrical repair shop to buy components to build a nuclear launch facility or a new amplifier or something no-one else had a clue about, and they offered him a job there and then, which he took. And loved it. Because he could spend all day Saturday being much cleverer than everyone else and getting paid for it.

So I wanted a job. Even though I had no skills off the football pitch. But at 14 my dad’s mate, a bespoke tailor, needed a ‘gofer’ on Saturdays, at his shop in Soho. This was 1970. Soho didn’t look like it does today, all poncey and corporate and filled with generic stores. Back then there were no ‘multiples’ in Soho. There were fantastic music shops, clothes shops, Carnaby Street was for shopping, not the horrible ‘tourist attraction’ it has evolved into. And there was sex. Sleazy ‘sex shops’ selling all manner of deviant stuff. Above half the stores were brothels. Hookers were everywhere, along with other valuable society members like pimps and drug dealers. It was something of an ‘eye opener’ for me. As I walked around picking up cloth and buttons and tailory stuff, as that was another big thing in Soho. I had my first ever cappuccino, as the Italian cafes there were the only places where such things existed.

But I’d have to meet Paul, da boss, very early on Saturday, to whizz up to the West End in his Lotus (loved that), so after a year or so I quit. And moved more locally. To a clothes store in Ilford High Street (I avoided ‘upmarket’ wherever possible, on principle) called Mr Byrite. They had about 30 stores in and around London. Owned by ‘the Levy brothers’, one of whom was the daddy of Daniel Levy, the recently retired chairman of Spurs.

Mr Byrite sold shit. Cheap shit. You bought a shirt, wore it that night to go out, then threw it away. Washing their clothing was never really recommended. But no-one minded, they just bought another one next week. It was so busy, in addition to the full-time staff, there were at least 10 Saturday-boys. Standing around, smoking, (we all smoked, it was a job requirement), messing around, looking for any stray girls who were brave enough to enter what was probably a rather forbidding environment. But selling shit-loads of clothes. Every week we all put in a few bob (small amount of money, ffs) to buy any new albums that appealed. No rubbish. No ‘pop’. Just great music. Played all day at volume 11. Whilst we smoked, lolled around, attacked girls and sold a truck load of crappy clothing. A win-win.

Because this was a very ‘cash purchase’ time, and the eastern parts of our fair City have always favoured bundles of the stuff passed down alleyways to avoid the prying eyes of HMRC, at the end of a Saturday we’d have thousands of pounds in cash. Which we took the bank in a little leather pouch-thing and deposited into the ‘night safe’, attached to the bank’s wall. Obviously, with gangsters and robbers and armed thieves all over the High Street, you have two options. Bury the pouch in a bag and take it discreetly to the bank with all due nonchalance. Or get a gang of 12 and march down to the bank singing, screaming and pushing innocent bystanders out of the way (especially old and infirm ones), normally whilst carrying large blunt instruments. Due to a lack of subtlety in my youth, we opted for the second.

So go now; get a Saturday job. You could become a proper thug.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

PS. If I drop Donald Trump a fifty, do you think he’d come for Kier Starmer, like he did Maduro?

The joys of electric cars.

We took Mel’s to Gatwick because it’s big enough. Mine is functionally useless. That’s not what it’s for. But heh, even with the manufacturers blocking the charge capacity to 80% about a year ago (don’t worry, I’m on it. Mis-selling, innit) we left home with ‘280 miles’ on the car. But having travelled just 60 of them to Gatwick, we had just 145 left. Ok, I know, maffs is not normal in EV-world. By the time the meet’n’greeters had taken it away and brought it back, we had 90. And that ain’t enough for a 60 mile journey. Nothing like enough. Unless you want to ride at 45mph with the heaters and radio off.

So after retrieving the vehicle after our delayed flight, we went to the local charging station. The good news being, it was fantastic. They’re called ‘gridserve’ and it is brilliant. About 25 fast-charging stations, 10 for Teslas, the rest for proper cars not driven by tossers. And you just wave your card, plug’n’play. They do have a (fucking) app, but you don’t need it. So I didn’t.

What do you do at Gatwick when it’s midnight and you need to kill 20 minutes? Clue: there’s a McDonalds next door. We hadn’t eaten since a very light lunch and BA don’t feed the cheap-seat rabble. Therefore, all the boxes were ticked which are essential to justify dicing with death in my favourite store in the world. And they sell coffee. Hence today’s pic; my excitement after ordering!!! We eventually made it home by 2 o’clock.

And as we were then coming home, America invaded Venezuela. The bombed bits of it, not the bits with the oil, obviously, just other bits. And then, incredibly, they kidnapped Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Flew him… somewhere. No idea where. Only Trump knows that.

There’s no question that Maduro is a total motherfucker. He’s disgustingly corrupt, has no control over his country’s drug lords, nor the safety of innocent Venezuelans. The country has the largest oil reserves in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. And yet, under this ultra-socialist (phah!) leader, most of the population live near to starvation. Which is why he’s a mate of Corbyn. To show us how such people run an economy.

And yet…

Is it right for a nation to invade another and rip the president out of his life? Even if he’s only still president because of rigged elections and elimination of opposition. Is it ‘right’ for one man (basically) to decide and orchestrate ‘regime change’ in a foreign country? If so; why aren’t we in Iran? There’s never been a better time to shaft the Ayatollahs. It would be like a ‘buy one, get one free’ kind of deal. And how about China? I know, they’re a bit nuclear which makes it more difficult. As with Russia.

If you start with ‘bad leaders’ and removing them, where does it end?

Happy welcome home Saturday

A xxxx

“British Airways would like to apologise to travellers on flight BA666 (all BA flights now carry the devil’s number) for the 2 hour, possibly 3 hour, maybe more, delay. This is due to a shitstorm over Gatwick/Heathrow/City. We hope this will not inconvenience you too much. Don’t think of complaining, you’ll be wasting your breath. British Airways would like to wish you all the Happiest of New Years.”

So we arrived at Tenerife airport. And we arrived early. Because we’re clever. And read about how passport control at this airport is horrendous. So even with the traffic jam on what they loosely call ‘the motorway’ over here, we still arrived 3 hours before our flight. In part because it was pissing down, again, so what we gonna hang round for? The pool?

But being Tenerife airport, BA don’t have their own check-in desks. No-one does. They kind’a ’hot desk’ across the arrivals area. So you can’t drop your bags until they’ve assigned a desk number to the flight. And we’re so clever, we sat there for 45 minutes before that happened. Huh! How’s that for clever?

Then we learned that our flight is delayed. An hour. And 3 minutes, to be precise. At this precise moment.

The good news was; passport control was a doddle. No queue. No hassle. Unfortunately, the rest was all bad news. And when we finally make it back to Gatwick, we’re gonna need to charge Mel’s car before the ride home. At Midnight. In Gatwick.

Fuuuuuuccckkkkkk

A xxxx

I’d just like to reaffirm that I make no judgments. As sentence with similar usage as MPs saying ‘let me make this perfectly clear’ telling you they’re going to avoid answering in as many ways as possible. And in this particular instance, I’m making no judgments about accents. Regional accents. The reason for which I can assume a position of impartiality is that I growed up in East Luundun, dinn’I? And some say I still have the lingering vestiges of that horrendous sub-Estuary Mockney. To which I reply: FAARK ORFFF YA NOB-END OR I’LL CHIN YA!!!!

So if I even notice accents, it’s from a completely neutral standpoint. It’s not about implied superiority for those with BBC, ‘received pronunciation’ type speech. You really don’t have to sound like a cross between a 1937 radio broadcaster and a Wing Commander from RAF Dambusters to get along in the world.

But here, in Tenerife, we have a whole range of accents to pick on. Sorry, to choose from. Obviously there’s a Spanish one. Don’t mind that. At least they’re making an effort. Unlike the Northern Irish. Who sound like they’re not making any kind of effort to be understood by anyone from outside the Province. And we do have a rather large contingent of those from Belfast here. No idea why, maybe there’s some kind of pact going on, maybe Spain’s the only country which will admit those from NI? I could understand a blanket ban.

But the ‘cream of the crop’, accent-wise. Or perhaps the ‘bottom-of-the-barrel’ more appropriately, is the Liverpudlians. With accents so thick that they can’t even be understood by other Liverpudlians. It’s not English. as we know it. It’s not anything, as anyone knows it. I don’t extrapolate this complete lack of communication ability with some kind of delayed evolution. (Communication being a virtual apex of evolutionary progress). But the scientific evidence does lean strongly to such a conclusion. If these people weren’t wearing Liverpool football shirts you’d think they came from some pre-lingual outpost of a lesser known planet on the edges of the Milky Way. Also, having a Liver-bird tattooed on their faces is a bit of a giveaway.

It’s raining here today. Not in an English, grey, drizzly kind’a way, but in a more sub-Saharan African kind’a way, where you know its raining because it hasn’t stopped since they dragged me and Lila out of the pool (because we were getting wet???) and there’s six inches of water across everything. Proper rain. Though unfortunately it’s not really much less wet that the type we get at home.

I expect no sympathy.

Happy New Year everybody; let’s hope it’s a good one. Ok, a better one.

A xxxx

I just can’t understand how, for the 57th consecutive year, I’ve missed out in the New Year’s honours list. It just makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, just look at me, ffs, I’m worth a CBE just for being gorgeous. But when you take into consideration all my wonderful benevolence and my vital assistance to ‘the community’ (that vague and meaningless conglomeration of worthless freeloaders and tax avoiders), it is an actual crime against humanity, against morality, against… against me! I should be a Lord, no question about it. I’d take a knighthood. Shit, I’d take ‘Dame’ in front of my name if there was one begging. But no. Iris Elba gets one for earning 225 million quid a year making Luther and rubbing up against Ruth Wilson. I’d do that for nothing. Daniel Levy gets a CBE or OBE or some other useless set of letters which come AFTER your name, so are of no value whatsoever, and as some joker pointed out; another who has to get his rewards by leaving Spurs. They awarded some useless woman an OBE for getting sacked by the BBC for showing the Gaza documentary which was produced by Hamas, FFS.

So getting sacked by the Beeb is worthy of an ‘honour’, whereas being a perfect human being gets you fuck all. Again.

I give to charity. Ok, I bunged a pound coin at a homeless man, but only to distract him so I could nick his can of Tenants Extra. Which would cost 2.47 in Tescos, so that shows great ingenuity as well. Yet I remain honour-free. I’ve done more to sustain the black economy than all the market traders in Bethnal Green. But get no recognition.

When I was at ‘number 10’, many years ago, for a Chanukah party, I shook hands with David Cameron. I palmed him a £50 note, with a big wink, assured that I’d be Lord Conway before the week was out. All I got was note thanking me for my donation to the Conservative Party and price list for honours, starting at 22,000 for a CBE.

So I’ve decided to adopt a more egalitarian approach. I’ve become ‘anti-honours’ as they exist to sustain the horrible class system in our nation. To exemplify all that is wrong with Britain. That ‘entitlement’ comes from the word ‘title’ and we can all live without them. Happily. Or, in my case, miserably. We can live without aspirations to Little Lord Fortleroy, we no longer have to ‘doff our caps’ at some poncey tosser because his grandfather’s uncle was given a back garden by Henry VII’s third cousin. We are a nation free from the malevolent class system which has ruled here since King Canute pulled the sword out of the lake. Or someone did something like that, anyway.

I’m free from worry. Free from title. Free from destructive and anachronistic class system in our land.

Happy Tuesday

(Sir) A xxxx

Before I get started on the football, in which I intend to focus on every single second of Spurs remarkable and outstanding victory at Crystal Palace, I just want to offer my words of support and…. in fact, adoration, for Alaa Abdel Fattah, and welcome him back to HIS home nation. Where he belongs. Among his brethren. Both conceptual brethren and by virtue of his British mother, brethren. He became a British citizen in 2021, arriving symbolically at the same time as the second wave of covid, and then was in prison in his other favourite nation, Egypt. Where he’s languished for a decade. But ‘we’ got him released and freed and managed to return him to… the nation he… well, there’s the question.

Kier Starmer, the bandwagon-jumper’s, bandwagon jumper, jumped in before even one of his 724 advisors, researchers, helpers, image consultants, hair-dressers, rabbis (for when he’s ‘Jewish’) or lawyers, had the chance to stop him, to consider his words, to edit him, and basically declared that if he (Starmer) was gay, then Alaa would be chosen to father his children. The was simply no level of praise too strong, to passionate and too uninformed for our PM to gush with over our returning ‘hero’. And he is a hero. Fighting for gay rights in Egypt is never going to endear you to the authorities, but he did that. And fought for democracy. Great guy. Right.

So the posts Alaa made in 2010, 11 and 12, stating that he’d like all zionists murdered, that all ‘colonialists’ should die (interpret his definition of ‘colonialist’ how you wish) and that he’s a racist who ‘hates white people’, they got somehow missed by Starmer’s dedicated team designated: ‘we must try absolutely ANYTHING to try and make this pathetic man appear good or desirable in any possible way’.

But it’s ok! Starmer’s saved!! Because Alaa has said that his posts were ‘taken out of context’ and he apologises unequivocally for them. Oh. So that’s ok then. Phew. The PM dodged one there.

Whereas Crystal Palace dodged 2. Spurs won the game 3 nil. But the actual score was: Palace 0, Spurs 1, VAR 2. As once again those total bastard scumbags in VAR central conspired to rob us of 2 perfectly good goals. Other than the offsidey bits. Yet my team came through anyway. Worthy victors of a rather odd game. Very open, very flowing, but both sides faltering in the final third. Where VAR comes into its own.

It was a brilliant victory. Because it was a victory. And we are soooooo short on those this season that we can only see this as ‘the turning point’. We’ve so far had 17 ‘turning points’ this season, all of which proved to either not ‘turn’ enough, or to carry on turning until they come back full circle. Thus not turning at all. But we remain confident. Positive. Forward-thinking. And probably deluded. It’s how we cope.

Happy, post-victorious, Monday

A xxxx

And this photo: could they be related???

So what’s Tenerife like? Well… it was formed in 2600 BC when a volcano erupted under the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco. The volcano’s name was ‘Nigel’ and it was quite big. Because the eruption also caused a few other Canary Islands to form, possibly a bit of the west coast of Morocco and I’m guessing, a small part of Marbella. Where the Marriott now stands. The natural vegetation here is… predominantly quite green, and there are little mountains all around. Brown ones. They’re quite pretty. The indigenous people are… not really indigenous at all but came from Spain when the then King… Philippe, or Carlos IX, or Rodney III, came over on a boat (probably) and declared it their very own and built the shopping centre.

Basically, I have no fucking idea what it’s like. I got off a plane. They told me I was in Tenerife and I believed them. A very nice man in a white Toyota taxi then brought me to our resort, where they lock us in for 12 hours a day and then allow us out ONLY to go find dinner. Then we have to return in time for curfew otherwise our ankle bracelet trackers send 10,000 volts up our legs. That gets you back in a hurry.

Ok, we should go ‘exploring’. We should hike up the other volcanoes here and get bitten by the doubtlessly exotic insects they have, possibly even snakes!!! We should take a boat ride round the southern tip of the island, diving off the side to catch wild oysters. In our teeth. Or we could take a motor-bike out, fall off it, as all tourists do, and spend three days checking out both the hospitals round here and also our health insurance limits.

But we’re not really here for that. We’re here to rest. And play with Lila and Joey. And, trust me, you don’t want to sit in a car/coach for 2 hours with Joey to go to a volcano that he doesn’t really want to see. Yet, oddly, he’ll happily sit for 2 hours this afternoon to watch his beloved Spurs lose at Crystal Palace. But that’s a different kind of ‘concentration’, it’s a ‘commitment’.

So, due to being actual inmates in a Tenerifian prison, albeit a very upmarket prison, we lie in the sun, we read our books, we swim, we take walks along the fabulous promenade, we play, we rest and we lie down some more, once the resting gets a bit tiring.

And it’s actually quite liberating, all this ‘doing nothing’. Feeling no pressure to do anything at all. How wonderful.

Happy hols,

A xxxx

Why do we take holidays? Well, it’s a complex question. We take holidays to rest. To relax. To adhere to the ‘change is good as a rest’ maxim, maybe to get some sunshine at a time when we don’t got none at home, and maybe because we’re just fucking exhausted, overworked, and knackered out. So we take that break. Come to the sun. And rest. And that lasts until Joey launches himself at me as I walk through the hotel entrance, a self-propelled projectile aimed for my solar plexus.

If I actually viewed such an event, however physically painful, however bone-breakingly intense, as anything other than ‘the best thing in the world’, I’d have grounds for complaint. When his older and oh-so-much-cooler sister approaches in her much more measured, pre-teenly-nonchalant way because she too wants to share the lurve, then the world is back on its axis again.

So here we are. Oh, my daughter’s here too. Whassername. In case we need an adult in the group. With my son-in-law. With whom I’ll watch any Spurs games on view here, so Joey can comfort us during and after. His 6 year-old view on such things is much healthier than mine and his dad’s, not having suffered quite so long. I had Joey practising the phrase ‘cooom-on Cit-eh’ the other day, for when we have to convert. Well, Mel grew up in Leeds and that’s up north. So how far can it be from Manchester? Giving us ‘legacy rights’ to jump on that bandwagon so lavishly fuelled by Arab oil money.

Tonight the daughter and Tory Boy are going out for a ‘date night’. Whilst we’re ‘lumbered’ with the kids. Oh noooooooo… A ‘sleepover’, even though the room is precisely the same as theirs, to the millimetre.

We have strict rules to follow. Reading, bedtime, cuddles, sleep. No admission til 7am and no iPads til then.

I’ve never been great at rules. Always a bit of an issue for me. Though I’m generally ok with Lila & Joey’s rules. They align more with my world view. Which is, roughly, anything for a decent night’s sleep and there’s no such thing as ‘too much sugar’.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Like the King, I’m sending a Christmas message this year to all my loyal subjects. Otherwise known as ‘the plebs’. Because those of us in high office should always realise and appreciate that there are commoners, ‘working people’ and other versions of ‘scum’, all over the country, at this very moment fighting each other over who gets the Turkey wing this year, or who gets to drink the last can of Tenants Extra because mother-in-law has drunk the other 5 in the 45 minutes since she arrived.

So what you should all be doing in fact is finding the most freezing, arctic, frigid body of water you can and immersing yourself in it. Preferably whilst wearing a red bikini fringed with white fur, stick-on antlers, or a long white beard. And essentially, drunk. Or how and why would you ever enter such a place.

But it seems almost to be de rigeur to jump into the North Sea, or the English Channel or some version of ice-laden coastal waters on Christmas Day. It started (as with soooo many bad ideas) in Scotland. Where the Firth of Forth would be awash with plungers into the ice-water. Now it’s everywhere. Devon, Belfast, even Worcestershire. Which, I’ll admit, is a bit landlocked, but they’ve got cars, haven’t they? Or lakes, reservoirs and some really horrible, polluted canals. So no excuses.

Let me tell you, as your ‘other king’, what Jesus wasn’t doing on Christmas Day. He wasn’t jumping into cold water in a bikini. He may have has some issues, but he wasn’t a total fucking idiot. In fact, he had many problems. I mean, where did all that ‘poverty’ shit come from? Turning other cheeks? Rather than the more customary ‘aw’right, come on den, ya want some????’ reaction. And wearing sandals? Not sure if he did so whilst in a suit, but ya kind’a think he would. I don’t mind the feeding of the 5,000, but why didn’t he monetise it? 5,000 covers in one night; any restaurant would kill for that.

Though I must admit, I’m wearing sandals too!! Well, why not? It’s Christmas Day, FFS! It’s in honour of Jesus, just another nice Jewish boy. Or possibly the first ‘nice Jewish goy’, but I need to check. So I’m wearing sandals in HIS honour.

And because I’m in Tenerife and it’s fucking hot. And yes, I have immersed myself in water today. Not, possibly, of the frozen variety, but… slightly cool(ing).

Happy Christmas

A xxxx