Andy's Glasses

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

We get a new Prime Minister today. In all likelihood Liz Truss. Based only upon Rishi yesterday, who, suddenly, after months of slagging off, became really nice and conciliatory and flattering about her. Because she can give him a good job. But neither of them qualify for ‘genius’ status. Only my wife does that.

For years I’ve been making lamburgers. In all modesty, they are probably the finest lamburgers in the world. If there’s better, I’m yet to sample it. Others lack the taste, the dedication, the skill, artistry, the texture, the… the very lambiness required for perfection. I would give you the recipe but then I’d have to shoot you. Like Coca Cola, like Big Mac special sauce, this is top secret and kept in a safe in the Kremlin. Though, to be honest, it ain’t rocket science. Even though, unlike present day American ‘rocket science’, my lamburgers don’t leak. Ok, they drip a bit but that’s desirable.

So I go to our local butcher and buy lamb mince. The butcher is kosher so the mince is very, very expensive. But that merely reflects the fact that kosher meat is so kind and gentle that it almost qualifies as vegan. No, really. The sheep are kept in a 5 star hotel, grazing on a golf course. They are ‘euthanised’ by gently going to sleep. (Do sheep get to sleep by counting humans? Deep question.) And butchered with… errrr… love. Anyway, buy some fucking lamb. But then come the list of ingredients to turn a heap of pink mush into a revelation of taste and wonder!!! And it is time-consuming. I use onion, obviously, garlic and (secret ingredient number 1) fresh mint leaves!!! Which all need ‘chopping finely’. No-one wants twigs in their burger, or a big lump of onion. So I deploy the mini-food-processor. Ahhhh, that turns fingers to stumps in mere seconds, so onions and garlic? No problem. Yet there is a problem. You put the stuff in, hit the motor, the blade spins and hurls all the onion, garlic and leaves to the sides. Where they stick, remaining untouched by the blade. Shove them back to the middle, hit power and it repeats. And repeats. And…

Then Mel showed me a trick that she invented all by herself whilst making meatballs and encountering the same problem. And it is so brilliant, so simple, so… it works.

Put all the stuff to be chopped in the processor. Then add a raw egg. (Vegans may use a substitute to add to their lamb). Because any burger recipe needs eggs. And when you spin that lot, you arrive in heaven. The food processor becomes the holy grail. Filled with really finely chopped stuff. And a beaten egg. Which you needed anyway.

You’ll thank her forever. But I’ll take the credit and patent the process in MY name.

(The other secret ingredient is honey, so vegetarians can eat them too).

Happy Cooking

A xxxx

VAR has ruined my life. I’ve survived Brexit, well, I am currently in the process of surviving it, the jury’s certainly still out on that one. And I’ve definitely survived Covid because I’m beyond caring about it. The cost of living crisis we’ll cope with, we have no choice. I’ll cut down on the caviar and vintage champagne if I have to but I’ll never stop buying diamond jewellery. There’s no gas, we’re on the verge of a world war, China’s gone maverick and the pound is currently worth about the same as a Burkino Faso centime. But VAR??

You just can’t cope with it. Don’t get it. Don’t need it. Hate it beyond my hatred even for some of my wife’s family. That much. And yet, why? Spurs have had a few decisions go against them, like yesterday’s terrible removal of our 3rd goal just because… well, because he was offside. Not even in that annoyingly, ultra-pedantic, VAR-type ‘offside’, but actually, you know, offside. But I reckon, in the few years of VAR, we’ve had far more decisions go our way than against. The outrageous decision 3 years ago against Manchester City in the Champions League which went in our favour should have been a forewarning of what lay in store with the ridiculous new system. That has since become ‘the best night of my life’. If not, 2 weeks ago at Chelsea exemplified everything that was and is wrong with VAR, all to Spurs benefit.

VAR was introduced to clarify ambiguity and to right wrongs. Instead it has proven to be ludicrously inconsistent, increasing the ambiguous and misreading the obvious. But of course, the implication is that this mystical acronym V.A.R. is some kind of magic box into which you put information and out of which comes definitive clarification. And its not. It is a camera. The output of which has to be viewed by a man. Sometimes a woman (but not yet, I think) and often a blind imbecile. Who takes so long to make his decisions that the entire nature and balance of the match is subsequently altered.

And then there’s the emotional. To have a goal taken away is devastating. After 4 or 5 minutes of Mr VAR agonising over his indecision, the impact is 100 times worse for the whole team. Which affects the way they then play.

We need a rethink. Until we can instal a system that is totally computerised (we can send a man to the moon FFS, how hard can this be? Ok, America can’t, currently, but they will one day soon, I’m sure, once shit has been bound together in Florida) we should abandon VAR as a tragically failed experiment which has had far more negatives than positives.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I was back at sea. Ok, at canal. The Boatman had made it all the way to Leighton Buzzard in the two weeks since we went to Milton Keynes. That’s four motorway junctions in two weeks. But you don’t buy a boat for speed. Not that boat. You buy it because its by far the easiest way to start fights with stroppy canal bastards who don’t like their boats being banged. Tossers. Shouting, screaming, moaning, horrible tossers. We left loads in our wake on Thursday as we sailed peacefully through the countryside.

Mel stayed home. Not for her the life of a sea-farer, even for a day. It’s a man’s world. Other than the women who do it. But most of them are passengers. On little boats. And I encountered a new thing. Locks. Those funny, quirky things without which boats would have to be sailing downhill. Or possibly uphill. Which the laws of physics prevent, even though it might be quicker to change those laws than to ‘do a lock’. There again, everything on the water happens at ‘boat speed’. So no-one’s in a hurry. Only the ones coming to start a fight.

You arrive at the lock and moor up. (10 minutes). Then you check out to see if the lock is currently high or low. The rule being: whatever you want it to be, it ain’t. So you wait a bit for a boat to come the other way, because that’s protocol. Locks waste water and two boats, like two heads, are better than one. (20 minutes). Then you give up and go fill the lock. Or empty the lock, depending which way you’re going. (Another 10 minutes). Then you open the gates and pull the boat in. (10 minutes because although its floating, its still 38 tonnes of floating). The the lock fills/empties again (10 more minutes), then you open the gates and you’re away!!! Wow! In a flash. A 2 hour, 46-minute flash. There’s lots of knobs to pull on and levers to operate and winding up (not other boaters, that’s too easy) but I don’t think you’re ready for the technical stuff yet.

And then we moored up so The Boatman had a nice slot for the night and I just had to get back to the Tesco car park where I’d left the car. Which was about 3 miles upstream. Oh. and there were no roads in sight, just fields. Uber had ‘no cars available’ because Prius don’t make tractors. So we deployed the electric scooters from the hold (like a loft, but lower, and on a boat) and rode along the tow path to arrive back to the car. With 2 electric scooters. And a very small car.

Ironically, electric scooters are illegal on the roads (other than rental ones) and on pavements. Both of which are kind of flat and smooth and straight and nice. Riding them on tow paths is probably less illegal but they’re bumpy, bendy, lumpy and you have a canal about 3 feet away.

Happy Saturday. You landlubber.

A xxxx

Ok, I get it. Finally. It’s taken a while. I want to be a Manchester City fan. Always loved them (never), my favourite city in the world (loathsome, dank shit-hole), forever in my heart (hated them from my first ever football match, against… Manchester City). They are team with a full, rich history (rubbish) and act always with dignity and integrity (yeah, right). Oh, and Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland. Who, along with the club’s owners, epitomise the essence of being British.

See? Lots of good reasons. So I can convert. I’m allowed. I have the relevant history, the required commitment and the utmost desire to… to… to just beat every other team without ever considering the prospect of defeat other than as a freak and random ‘one-off’ event that will never happen again so long as me and Pep both shall live, amen. ‘We’ even give most teams a 2-nil start, just for fun and the challenge, and still win. And I’m sure winning every game must get a bit boring, but not as much as losing. Nothing like as much as losing. Or even drawing against teams who you really should beat. The shattering of hope, the dilution of ambitions, the never-ending catalogue of tragedy that YOU Spurs fans have to endure, season after season.

Arsenal can (hopefully) delude themselves after winning 5 in a row, but you simply know that when they go to the Etihad (Praise be) or even in the clash of the airlines when the Etihad goes to the Emirates, there will be only one winner.

Manchester City are beyond any former notion of merely ‘a good team’. When Haaland arrived, possibly the only true ‘number nine’ that Pep has ever been associated with during his long and fantastically successful career, it elevated City immediately and with extreme prejudice. He may be ugly but 2 hat-tricks in 2 games?

So now I just have to get my head around the fact that some rich fucking Emirate dude bought ‘my’ club, which was always shit, and pumped billions of his personal trillions into it, flaunting all rules and regulations of any financial nature, turned the entire league into a competition of dick-measurement measured in dollars and ruined my PREVIOUS life forever. And then I’ll embrace my new love.

Come on Cit-eh

Shoot me now

A xxxx