Andy's Glasses

This evening Spurs go to play at Brentford. The magnitude of this match simply cannot be overstated. Bigger than the moon landing. Bigger than Elvis. Bigger than the war in Ukraine. Bigger than anything ever. Having lost to Brighton, stupidly, laughably, ridiculously and so annoyingly, last weekend, we now find ourselves balanced precariously in 4th space, separated from Arsenal in 5th by mere goal difference. Because the Arse came off their 3-match losing streak (which we all loved) to beat hapless Chelsea (which we all hated). The only other viable team with realistic hopes for that massively important 4th place, is Manchester United. Who play Arsenal right now. I wish them luck. Not just because they’re playing Arsenal, but because they showed on Tuesday night that they are a totally shambolic rabble of uselessness with no cohesion, no spirit, no fight and no clue leaving luck and God as their only possible chances. Good luck with both.

When Man United lost at Liverpool they were useless. But Liverpool were simply sublime. Possibly even divine. The classiest team performance I’ve seen since Danny Blanchflower retired. And tomorrow Liverpool play local boys (but never really ‘rivals’ in any real sense, I’m afraid) Everton. Who, with Burnley on something of what passes as a ‘winning streak’ among the bottom 6, are in deep shit. Could get relegated. Which would, in normal circumstances, make me sad. But not since Frank Lampard became their manager. Now all bets are off, all niceties suspended, let ‘em fucking drop.

But Brentford. More importantly, more Christian Eriksen. Who, since his heart attack on the pitch and subsequent re-birth, has rightly been elevated to the status of God. Hero. Untouchable. Jesus did similar and they’re still talking about it 2000 years later. So Christian is ‘protected’. Every fan saw his ‘demise’, felt for him, sent love through the tv screen and thus retains part ownership of the player. It’s the way it works. Wherever he goes, whatever shirt he’s wearing, he is cheered, given ovations and, because he has bounced back amazingly, he commands the ultimate respect from all of football. Something that can never be achieved without dying, unfortunately, but no-one said football was about kindness and consideration.

The Spurs fans who go to Brentford will definitely show the Dane their love. For how brilliant he was when he wore our shirt, for the ‘event’ and because we want him back in the summer. The problem is that Brentford have won 5 out of 5 when he’s been playing and, basically, lose every game when he’s not. And he’s playing tonight.

Sentimentality has no place here. We must win. And win big. Because if we don’t… Mummeeeeeeee!!!!

Happy saturday

A xxxx

The French presidential election is on Sunday. The candidates are, in order of least obnoxiousness: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. (Accounts of obnoxiousness may vary). That’s it. Just the 2. Beauty and the Beast, without the Beauty. And the contest is close. Alarmingly close.

The French don’t generally do a lot of ‘re-electeds’. They’re such an ungrateful, dissatisfied nation that any president lasting his full term without a sex scandal or surrendering his nation to any would-be invaders would still be turfed out of the Elysee Palace to make room for the next hopeless case. Which would bode ill for Macron.

But France are currently suffering the same malaise as England. That of ‘no viable alternative’. Thus ‘the devil you know’ becomes, if not exactly desirable, then the lesser of evils. And in Le Pen’s case, true evil. She may call her party ‘National Rally’, like a movie with Terry Thomas in a vintage Rolls Royce running out of petrol outside the casino at Monte Carlo, but its not. The ‘national’ falls short of ‘nationalist’ because of implications towards all of France’s immigrant population. Most of whom she has offended and hated, all of whom she’d love to repatriate or just drown, with the remainder banned forever from wearing any traces of origins which may be not-French in any way. Her father was a nazi, her mother was (probably) a nazi, so apples, trees, etc, it doesn’t take Isaac Newton to guess. Not about gravity, the other ‘apples, trees’ thing.

And that’s why Macron is still in the race. Not because he’s any good, not because anyone likes him, not because he’s very tall, but just because he’s not Marine Le Pen. The smug little shit is electable just because the person standing against him simply isn’t. Or hopefully won’t be. Because although ‘populism’ is just another way of saying surge-to-the-far-right-ism and was big in ‘the Trump days’, she is basically stupid. Her brand of ‘populism’ involves ‘reducing the cost of living’ whilst lowering taxes and increasing public spending. The sort of numbers that only Diane Abbot could make agree. But no-one with any real understanding of… numbers.

Like in Britain where the Tories won’t oust Boris simply because there is no viable alternative within their own party, nor anyone else’s, France is in the same predicament. Another term of office for a worthless tosser with a Napoleon complex or the spiritual daughter of Adolph Hitler.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

What happened to all my Easter Eggs? Like, WTF???

Ok, not mine, the ones I bought along the way, that’s a rhetorical question. Long gone. But the rest of them. The ones I didn’t buy. Which, normally, over Easter weekend are lined up, piled up, amassed in pyramids in all the supermarkets waiting for me to rent a van and buy the lot. But this year? It’s all gone a bit ‘Man United’ on the Easter Egg front.

Just to recap. I love chocolate. But ONLY ‘proper’ chocolate. And you can tell its ‘proper’ because it comes in purple. Nothing else will suffice. I don’t define ‘chocolate’ by its cocoa percentage, nor its ‘purity’, fatlessness or how much it costs. I just want Cadburys. Milk chocolate. In pretty much any form (flake, Dairy Milk, twirl, Freddo…) but the best, the ultimate, the definitive mouth-fill of my favourite foodstuff, is Easter Eggs. Maybe because of the texture, maybe because they’re only available for about 3 months a year. Maybe because they’re big.

Except this year. When there weren’t any to fucking buy.

My typical shopping trip between February and April, just ‘popping out for some milk’ will see me return with 8 Easter Eggs. And, in all likelihood, no milk due to the sheer excitement. Because every Supermarket, Corner shop, petrol station, has piles of them. And always ‘on offer’. 2 quid, maybe 4 quid for a bigger one, and only Cadburys, obvs.

But this year was different. Waitrose didn’t stock any smallish eggs. M&S didn’t but I’m not sure if they ever have. I did make a major acquisition at Aldi, but its a horrible place and I didn’t return. But last night we went ‘for a walk’. Because yesterday was the first day after Easter. Last year on that day I went into my little Tesco on Fleet Street and bought half their display. All half price. I just put my credit card in the machine and told them to stop ringing up eggs when I’ve reached my credit limit. This year they had not one. Same at the Sainsburys Local, the Iceland (FFS) and Budgen.

Have Easter Eggs become the new Petrol? Pricey beyond belief and not always available? Or like gas? Do they come from Russia and are thus sanctioned? Were they sent to Ukraine to help the troops, along with the anti-tank missiles? Or is this part of a sinister government conspiracy related to the national obesity problem so wonderfully exemplified by our Prime Minister??

All I know is, as we enter the Spring period, when my normal problem is storage of overstock, I’m down to my last 1-and-a-half eggs. Another fucking crisis. Just what we need.

Unhappy post-Easter

A xxxx

There’s a lot of football coming up. The season is drawing to a close. The Premier title race is reaching its conclusion, the fight for top 4 looking like Lviv on a bad day and relegation battles are being… well, lost really. Liverpool and Manchester City can both win the league and Champions League but Liverpool already have the League Cup and are in the FA cup final next month too, going for an ‘unprecedented quadruple!!!’

Ahhhh, silverware, who needs it? Well, it does make you feel better. And now that Emma Raducanu has come out as a Spurs fan (wearing a named replica shirt in training, increasing her gorgeousness 10-fold) there are moves that we can have a copy of the American Open tennis trophy in the Spurs cabinet. Just because…

My team didn’t do very well on Saturday. They went all ‘Spurs’ again. Taking on what should have been ‘straightforward opposition’ and losing. Not because Brighton were so fantastic but because we were so awful. However, with Arsenal losing (agaiaiaiain), it was not all doom and gloom in 4th spot. But Manchester United winning was a bit of a problem. Well, as has happened a lot at Old Trafford recently, Manchester United actually lost to ‘can’t buy a win’ Norwich, but Ronaldo won and gave them the points.

United play Liverpool tonight. And we desperately need the Scousers to win. Although its almost unthinkable that slick, consistent Liverpool could lose to arch-rivals and currently clueless Man United (probably without Ronaldo who tragically lost a baby yesterday), you must remember that ‘this is football!’ And anything can happen. United winning would be a catastrophe for us and for Liverpool. But then United play Arsenal on Saturday (draw would be nice) and Chelsea the following Thursday (Russian missile would be nice). About which the Mancs are moaning, obviously. Probably pull the ‘Covid card’ and ask for a deferment. Oh, but we’ve got toooooooo many games to play, its not faiaiaiaiaiaiairrrrrr. But, quite frankly, fuck ’em. They really don’t deserve to be anywhere near 4th place this year so the further away the better.

Much as I hate football when Spurs lose, it is getting a bit exciting up there.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We had a little ‘tea’ yesterday. For the exceptionally old and the extraordinarily young. We’re in the middle. Much nearer the latter, obvs. We brought ‘the dads’ (combined age 193) to see their great-grandchildren (combined age 8, nearly) because its good for generations to mix. Beneficial to all. So the old’uns get to fall asleep near children and the kids have 2 more ‘things’ to ignore as they run around breaking everything in the house. We’ll have just one new rule for Lila and Joey (making a grand total of… errrr… one) which is ‘DON’T BREAK THE ZIMMERS!!!!’ Great-grandfathers can be repaired or will heal, as they often are and do, but Zimmer frames become the most essential thing in their lives as neither can walk even across a room unaided. It’s what happens. Will happen to us all (should we be so lucky to live so long, pth, pth, pth).

On Friday night Mel & I ‘led’ the Passover festivities in the care home. I’ll spare you the details because all went swimmingly well except for a few reservations. Summed up by the old expression: you can please all the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time and a room full of Jewish nonagenarians NEVERRRRR!!!!! But that’s life. What was interesting was that in a room full of about 30 pretty old people, at least half used Zimmers. Because modern medicine is a brilliant thing, capable of keeping us alive and… not so much ‘kicking’ as possibly ‘limping’ or ‘staggering’, for longer than previous generations would have imagined possible. But it can’t stop the natural deterioration of bone and muscle. Which, kind’a, holds us all together and keeps us moving swiftly. Or slowly. And more importantly, stops us falling down. Thus the Zimmer frames. They can’t help with the other inevitabilities, like loss of hearing and sight, but they can stop you falling over so much. And provides amusement as you see three or four all heading for the door, as if racing, but in slo-mo. Very slo-mo.

And so the contrast. Lila and Joey, all energy and activity, and ‘the dads’, somewhat less so. But you can’t help thinking that its somehow instructive for the kids as well as a tonic for the elders.

I’m ordering my Zimmer today. In case they run out in the next 30 years. I’m getting the GTI-Twin-Turbo, capable of up to half a yard every 3 minutes.

Happy Families

A xxxx

Ok, so this is how you decorate a bedroom. You choose curtains. Takes, approximately, 2 years. If I’m honest, I left ‘most’ of this to Mel. Partly because I’m simply not fussy (I have one rule: no flower designs. Love flowers, hate florals), some might say ‘barely even care and one week after fitting wouldn’t be able to identify the design from a choice of 2’. And partly because I trust my wife’s judgment. In most cases. Some cases. A few. Ok, I trust her judgment about curtains. Possibly lampshades.

So we have our curtains chosen and being made. Now we can ‘co-ordinate’ the rest of the room. Yippie-yiy-ayyy. So we need paint. And thus ensues the square dance. In which little squares of loads of different colours, shades and depths just ‘appear’ on the walls. Most of which are ‘too dark’, ‘too light’ or ‘too pink’. And this continues until Dulux, Crown, Farrow & Ball and Little Green have run out of colours and its reached the point where if I stand still to put my pants on, I’ll have a square on my back in ‘Sunset Harmony’ before my testicles are settled. But eventually after a great deal of work and square paining by Mel and even more ‘FFS!!!!’ from me, The Colour! is chosen. The decorator arrives, spends 5 days applying The Colour, not just to the walls but also to the woodwork, wardrobes, skirtings, because that was ‘the look’ that ‘we’ wanted.

The day it was finished Mel hated it. I have no idea why, my aesthetic conceptualisation chip is broken. But she fucking hated it. ‘Sunburst Morning Yellow’ became ‘vomit and pus yellow’. ‘Aardvarks at the watering hole green’ became ‘road kill shit’ and was a source of anxiety and upset for my wife. (2 days had long passed so I’d stopped noticing).

A few weeks later we re-entered squaresville. That mysterious twilight zone where little coloured squares start appearing. And eventually we found a new ‘The Colour!’. Obviously a very different one. Not a sunburst or aardvark in site. And not willing to go to the not inconsiderable expense of getting the decorator back…

How’s your Easter weekend going? Onto the second coat yet?

Happy Paint-splattered Saturday

A xxxx

What do you know about Rwanda? Hmmmm… its in Africa… It’s… possibly hot… errrr… lions?… elephants?… in fact it sounds much nicer than England. It’s famous for beautiful hills and it seems a very nice place, predominantly Christian but no-where’s perfect. And the pictures I’ve seen make it seem quite pretty and lovely.

So much so that visitors to England are now going to be sent to Rwanda instead. It’s sort of an annex of Britain, just round the corner. Ok, round a 4,000 mile corner into the deepest darkest deep bits of the Southern Hemisphere in landlocked Africa. But a free, (unless you’re a UK tax-payer), all-expenses paid holiday for 3 months is not the worst deal.

If I’d spent 14 weeks trudging across the whole of Europe on foot then risking life and limb on an inflatable dinghy made for 12, accompanied by 74 others, as it crosses the channel, only to arrive in fucking Dover, inevitably grey, wet and windy, I’d be the first on the plane to Rwanda.

Because Boris (tosser) and Home Secretary Priti (bitch) have between them decided that Rwanda is the place to send all the refugee, asylum-seeking single men who arrive here seeking asylum. But, obviously, only the brown people. From Afghanistan. Bangladesh. Pakistan. The white ones, from Ukraine, are fast-tracked in the Aryan Races channel to the 100,000 British people eager to take them into their homes.

So it is possible that the Muslim hordes are being sent to Rwanda as a reward; they won’t have to endure British winters… spring and autumn are trying as well, whereas the Ukes will think January over here is summer. Plus, we all remember Nigel Farage with his ‘non-racist’ Brexit poster of a boat load of channel-crossers telling us to ‘reclaim the borders!!!’ Nothing subliminal about that message.

And you kind’a have to think that otherwise there is absolutely no reconciling the totally differing sides of our nation’s apparent racism. White people welcome, brown ones over there with the suspected terrorists, no-good-niks and criminals. Yeah, sorry matey, we don’t do ‘discrimination’ here at all, its against the law, now get on that fucking plane to Africa!!

Happy Easter (but apparently only if you’re white)

A xxxx

Tomorrow is the festival of Passover. And Easter. And as Passover is all about ‘telling the story’, you could, if pushed, combine these two festivals, merge them together. So when the Jews finally flee the horrible, sadistic Pharoah who had enslaved them, you could have Jesus leading them through the Red Sea instead of Moses. It’s a small thing but nicely inclusive. And then kill off Moses and let him get re-born, for a change, just before he brings down the 10 commandments.

I’m not a religious man. But I do like food. So ‘being Jewish’ simply means I get to eat chopped liver more than your average non-Jew. The praying bit I don’t get so exited about. In fact, I avoid it like… well, it is Passover, like (one of) the (10) plague(s). So Passover is always my favourite event of the Jewish calendar. Because it is ALL about food. Ostensibly in a restrictive way, because you can’t eat bread or anything made with flour, for 8 days. But in fact that means some (probably greedy, piggish) proto-Jew got really creative and established a whole ‘gluten-free’ world long before it became the world’s most fashionable allergy. And its all good and fab. We can eat ‘unleavened bread’ all we want. And its ok. In a ‘rock-hard, cardboardy’ kind’a way. But the festival bit is all about the special food and most importantly, its symbolism within ‘the story’.

So you have what’s called ‘the Seder’, where families sit round, tell the story, which we all know, but its gotta be done, of the Jews escape from Egypt, back in the day. And eat. You eat during the telling, bitter herbs to symbolise the bitterness of slavery. Matzo because they didn’t have time to leaven their bread before fleeing, in the pre-Paul-Hollywood days. We eat granite to symbolise building a pyramid, we eat cats because of the Egyptian thing, and we eat humble pie because of the slavery. Please don’t treat much of that literally. But the point is, the food represents the history. And then: we have dinner. And sing a few songs.

They asked for someone to ‘lead the Seder’ at the care home where my dad (97) and Mel’s dad (96) both currently reside. And we thought… well why not? All you need is 12 years of rabbinical study and a degree in Religious History. Or a cheat book. Which I have. I’m thinking changing the ‘symbols’ to ‘cymbals’ so at least it’ll be something they can all hear, and it may keep my dad awake for the duration.

Happy Easter/Pesach

A xxxx

As Boris Johnson becomes the first ever serving Prime Minister of our fine nation to be convicted of a criminal offence, we need to consider the future. Not just the matter of who should be at number 10 but much wider, grander, deeper: the entire structure of politics in Britain. Sorry: …in Britain!!!

So I just wish to make two points:
1. Boris really should resign.
2. Boris ain’t going nowhere.

Legally, morally, politically, Boris should fall on his sword, or better still, have a Julius Caesar moment with the full ‘et tu, Rishi’ as he falls in a puddle of his own blood, as his former allies and comrades sneer at his dying moments, thinking how far this will advance their own careers. And not for having the parties nor for the sheer hypocrisy of setting laws ‘for the nation’ which he chose personally to flaunt. Over 50 times. But his real crime was denying it happened. Lying. That’s, for me, the red line. Boris should not just leave but totally fuck off.

Ironically, the only thing keeping him in his job, allowing him to survive when he has no right, is Kier Starmer.

Because every time you start to think of a Westminster without Boris, the limp and soggy, lacklustre, red-faced twit of an opposition leader, gets his horrible face into a camera to say “he really must go”. And he’s been saying that, and pretty much nothing else, for the last 3 years. He has so overplayed the ‘really must go’ card that it has become meaningless. As does any word or phrase stated 40 times in quick succession. And you think ‘would I ever want that horrible man as the leader of our nation?’ Making Boris’s lying, cheating, disloyalty, bumbling and incompetence seem worth putting up with for just a bit longer.

Starmer’s latest ‘he must go’ was obviously Boris and his Fixed Penalty Notice. But ten minutes before, Sir Kier had been ‘he must go’-ing about Rishi Sunak. Because according to our Labour Party Leader, Rishi just ‘doesn’t get it’. Doesn’t get the cost of living problems, the gas price rises, nothing that poor, probably northern, working people are enduring. Well how could he? He spends his spare time working out how to save every last million quid from the tax man’s claws. So how could the chancellor thus understand the single-parent working mother of six children (from 7 different partners… you do the maths) living in a shoe box in Lincolnshire on 73p a month?!?!

I’d just like to point out that while Sir Kier Starmer QC has never been guilty of having sufficient billions to worry about tax avoidance, nor the wherewithal to investigate such a thing, he is about 36,000 miles from ‘poor’. He was a barrister. A QC. Then the Director of Public Prosecutions (not a very good one). He made a lot of money. Not Sunak/Murty millions but plenty. Enough that he personally will not worry about his electricity usage. Does that mean he ‘doesn’t get it’ either? Does he really believe that only the poor can understand the horrors of poverty? That no-one with a positive bank balance has any empathy? In which case, he ‘can’t get it’ either. Such a tosser.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I think we need to give Akshata Murty a bit of a break. Poor thing. Ok, rich thing. But she’s having a really really bad time at the moment, to such an extent that her husband, Rishi Sunak’s political aspirations are being called into question. And this is Crown Prince Rishi, heir to the throne currently sat upon by Blonde Boris’s fat arse. The very man who started his bid for Prime Minister by throwing 70 billion quid at the population in furlough payments. It’s hard to be more heroic and loved than that. And yet that was yesterday. Today, we fucking hate Rishi for being a lousy husband to a stinking rich, tax-avoiding billionairess who fucking hates England, never wants to live here and has robbed the NHS of MILLIONS!!! If your uncle Reg is currently on a waiting list for a new hip, it is HER FUCKING FAULT!!!

So we need to act in a more equivocal and less reactionary manner as we consider Ms Murty. In the name of fairness.

Is it a crime to pay less tax than you have to? Which is what she did by using her ‘non-dom’ status to pay tax earned in India for her Indian earnings. Even though she lives here. Is that wrong? She saved £2million a year by doing that and still had to survive on the 7/8 million left over. Plus her husband’s earnings and the overseas trust funds. But she has to pay for her gas’n’lectric too, ya know. Fill up the car; well, she has people to do it for her but someone’s gotta pay!

Is it a crime that her non-dom declaration states that ‘she lives in India and has NO intention to settle permanently in the UK’? And hubby wants to live at number 10. Ok, not permanently, our democracy doesn’t work like that. Unless there’s a divorce in the future which we don’t know about. Because we like our possible PMs to live here. Call me old fashioned. But not just live here, but be committed to the UK. Not possibly view it as one of so many places we may choose to live. California? Mumbai? London? Ahhhh, so many choices. Even Rishi’s Green Card, which he gave up just before becoming chancellor, commits him to living in America.

Yet none of this is a crime. Everything’s legal and above board.

Rishi Sunak has told us that we need to pay more tax. For the country. For the NHS. Because we need to pay back for the pandemic. We have emptied the pot and its going to hurt to refill it. And to state that, sincerely, whilst finding personal loopholes to avoid the impact personally, is not a crime either. Its just a bit hypocritical and not very nice. Wherever Akshata chooses pay her tax, at whatever preferential rate, its safe to say she won’t be poor.

Terrible political judgment aside, the only real ‘crime’ they’ve committed is to be exceptionally rich.

Happy Monday

A xxxx