Andy's Glasses

Roy Keane once attacked the ‘hospitality freeloaders’ at football matches, just verbally, unusually for him, and referred to them as ‘prawn sandwich eaters’. As if eating a prawn sandwich represented the most decadent, upper-class, almost aristocratic act a man could do. Women can eat them too but Roy probably had even more abuse to hurl at them.

The ‘hospitality’ areas of any football ground are the seats and boxes that are bought annually by companies. For directors, partners, the odd, lucky staff member, to entertain their guests. Thus creating areas of the ground where there are loads of people ‘just there for the ride’. Who don’t support either team on view. Who don’t like football but enjoy free beer. Let’s just say ‘who are less committed’. To the extent that when the second half starts, there are vast swathes of empty seats, the eventual occupants of which are far more interested in one more beer and three more prawn sandwiches than in events pitch-side. Deals are being done. Important conversations (do want the prawn or roast beef?) So they return late. And it is horrible.

But unfortunately, for football clubs, ‘hospitality’ is their financial life-line. Normal punters, the ‘mere mortals’ just pay a virtual small fortune for their season tickets, whilst the corporates pay very big fortunes. Ok, they throw in free beers, offer dining facilities pre-and-post-match, have a bunch of ex-players strolling round chatting and having selfies taken, but the clubs charge. Even the toilets in those areas have hand soap!! Warm water, which works!! Dyson dryers!!! It’s almost civilised. Hardly any violence. Only if there’s just one prawn sandwich left.

And as a lifelong football purist who enjoys the ‘rough’ of match days, who likes walking down dark tunnels lined with fag-butts and half-drunk away fans pissing against the walls (all away fans do that; its a territorial thing), there’s a lot to be said for prawn sandwiches.

Although, as prawns aren’t kosher, they don’t do those at Spurs. We have smoked salmon instead.

The son-and-heir-in-law has a contact (who will be forever blessed and should live to a hundred, pth, pth, pth). Who has lots of hospitality seats he seldom uses. Thus they get offered to Tory Boy. And, by proxy, to me. And thus we leave the mere mortals at on the High Road and walk in through the front door!!! Into the Palace of Tottenham. Which is vast, spotlessly clean and has all the beauty and modernistic grandeur of a 6-star hotel in Dubai. We enter a glass lift and a uniformed geezer presses the button for you, in case you’re so rich you don’t know how to do something like that yourself. And its all splendid and wonderful and polite and genteel. People even hold doors open for each other!! At fucking football!!! They have trophies there. Old ones, obvs.

The seats are spectacular (photo taken at a previous match, hence the mask round my neck) the food and drink abundant and the experience, whilst a little bit ‘different’, is just brilliant. Even for someone who firstly likes football an also is an actual fan!

Match was ok. We won. And I can’t wait to go there again. Just to spite Roy Keane.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I grew up in the 60s. That’s the 1960s. The 2060s haven’t arrived yet, you’ll know when they do because we’ll be in a post-climate-change dystopian nightmare with no power, no water, people eating each other, tsunamis on Oxford Street, floods, fires, dry seasons lasting a decade with wet seasons going on forever. The 1960s were different. Post war prosperity. Sugar! Shit loads of it, readily available and healthy to eat back then. It didn’t become toxic until 1994. And petrol. Loads of it. And cheap. You could fill up a Rolls Royce for £1 3s 7d. (If you’re under 45 just ask Alexa what that means). So cars were built for style, as aesthetics, works of art which could be driven and engines were unlimited. Because the petrol was cheap and Greta Thunberg was decades away from being born. Thus all cars were overpowered. Why not? And they became relatively cheaper to buy. The Americans, blessed with a massive home market, went mad building more and more powerful cars. So every movie and tv show had to ‘star’ at least one car, many had lots more. Steve McQueen is expensive to hire, but a Boss Mustang supercharged 7-litre, virtually nothing.

Thus all kids ‘back then’ were obsessed with cars, car chases, with powerful engines.

Which is why Jeremy Clarkson was invented. To give voice to our collective obsession.

The ‘kids’ (anyone under 40) of today don’t share their parents’ love of automotive excess. They don’t really get it at all. And I get that, its a different world.

So I’ve always loved reading the Sunday Times ‘driving’ section. Well, ‘driving page’ as it has now become. Presumably because its only me that reads it, why waste all that paper. And when Clarkson was the editor and main writer it was always about the latest supercar, hypercar, insane car. It was Bugattis and Lamborghinis and Konigseggs and cars with loads of syllables and even more cylinders. ‘WOW!’ Cars. Ok, every once in a while he’d preview the latest Ford Focus Economy Family Estate, or some other unworthy which you could probably even afford to buy, but that wasn’t the main Focus (pun, ha, ha). The whole idea, dating back to the 60s, was on excessive pushing of boundaries. Of engine sizes, of power, of speed, yes, of danger and of price. Didn’t matter because you were never likely to buy one. It was car porn.

Today’s driving section features Electric Camper Vans. I was unsure what to do first: cancel my subscription or slit my fucking wrists.

So now I’m off to Spurs early kick-off. And may face the same decision there if we don’t win.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

BOris GOt Fucked. That’s not strictly what ‘bogof’ means, but just seems appropriate. In the circumstances. Which are that due to obesity considerations (we are a nation of total fat bastards) companies offering meal deals ‘two for one!!!’ were going to be stopped in the case of ‘junk food’. Or in the case of ‘food’, as its known in Britain. So why give little Jimmy a pizza for his supper tonight (he’s 8 years old and weighs 14 stone in his batman underwear), when you can give him TWO on Super-special-double-chin Tuesdays from Pizza-Excess!!!

Boris has now shelved this rather sound-minded plan because of the cost of living crisis. So those hit hardest who, coincidentally, are the fattest, can still overload on high-fat, sugar-obscene foods. Rather than cook something for less than a quarter the price. And can do so until the cost of living crisis is over. Which will be… hmmmm… yeah, right. Another MP has arranged for food bank users to have a cooking course so as to maximise their ingredients and minimise the death risk at the same time. Because he’s a conservative MP, Labourites have been crying out that this is somehow patronising or worthless, ‘hungry people need food, not cooking lessons!’, they shout. But surely it makes sense. Labour are right, not every person in the north can enjoy take-away curries and bottles of beer, like Kier Starmer.

So Boris has turned his (very limited) attention (span) to ‘working from home’. And true to his policy of ‘leading from the mouth with the brain no more than 10 minutes behind’, which proved so successful when dealing with the Iranians about Naznin Zakhari-Radcliffe (doubling her prison sentence with just one misplaced sentence of his own; TOSSER!), he has accused every home worker of being a total workshy slacker, skiving their days away drinking tea in their pyjamas whilst watching Netflix and keeping ‘logged in’ for nap-times, morning, afternoon and the rest of the afternoon. It’s almost like he’s been spending time with Rachie.

Yet this is a grossly unfair assessment of most of those working from home. It’s just the lucky ones and civil servants who act in that manner. Most others work hard and devotedly. So they inform me. When they phone, bored, after waking up. And much as I truly appreciate the need to get people back to the office, probably more than most, it just ain’t for Boris to call. Especially when he works from home most of the time. It’s between the bosses and the staff and how everyone can be pleased.

Ok, FA Cup Final is on, I wish I could enthuse, but I’m going to Spurs tomorrow and that’s much more exciting.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

A beautiful game, ruined by the referee. I can only agree with Mikel Arteta completely and totally. The purpose of referees is purely ornamental, to look beautiful decked out in black; historical, from the old days before VAR; and as beneficiaries of the Premier League’s job-creation program to keep the unemployed off the streets. They have absolutely no right whatsoever in actually having any effect on the match. That would be prejudicial, subject to possible corruption and not in keeping with the spirit of abject violence which the quiet, seemingly intelligent Spaniard, seems to promote amongst his moronic players.

These players need to be given their freedom on the pitch. To create this ‘beauty’. They need to be able to play with flair, to give vent to the wonders of their athletic artistry, even when it resembles more Bruce Lee than Glen Hoddle. That’s just a matter of ‘style’. All this banding about of ‘cards’, yellows and reds, simply spoils the fundamental aesthetic of the game. So I have to ask: what was referee Paul Tierney doing? What was he thinking??? Awarding penalties? Bringing out coloured cards to wave?? I mean: WTF???

The problem is emphatically NOT down to Mikel Arteta, we need to get that straight right off the mark. Such a gentle, delicate man would never be the person to implement tactical systems on his team which result in brutality. It is not his way, certainly not the Arsenal way. Not since George Graham hung up his boots. Martin Keown perhaps. But during Arteta’s brief tenure, his team have been the victim of refereeing discrimination, persecution and unwarranted sendings off no less than 13 times!!! During the same period the next most ref-abused club is Brighton, with eight. Bastard, anti-Arsenal, Arteta-hating refs.

I get it really. When you play Spurs you’re in awe of Harry Kane but its Sonny who’ll kill you. The speed, the agility, the skill, the all-round slipperiness. So Rob Harding would have been instructed to ‘LET ‘IM KNOW YER THERE!!!’ in all the euphemistic understanding of that term. So Harding dutifully did.17 times in the first 10 minutes. Clattering and battering and butting and everything just short of rape. Unfortunately, Harding never got the second text which read: ‘once you receive the inevitable yellow card: BACK OFF!!! so you don’t get sent off’. And with an IQ of 46 the defender couldn’t work it out for himself.

All the ref’s fault. We woz innocent.

And so they were punished. Severely.

Happy no-justice Friday

A xxxx

So the football season has reached the point where even the most reddest of red Scousers has to admit defeat. That the ‘almost quadruple’ will have to wait til next year. Because even if Manchester City lose a match, which they won’t, they need to lose by 7 goals. Or thereabouts. Which, in terms of mathematical probability, is about the same as getting a wrong number on the phone from a life-form in another galaxy, on the same day you won 35 million quid on the lottery. And bumped into Elvis, in Brent Cross. Not gonna happen. City are too strong, and that’s without Erling Haaland, Europe’s new Harry Kane from Norway via Dortmund. Who joins them this summer. On apparently in the region of 200k a week. And as that’s only 10 million a year, it won’t affect Man City’s strict adherence to the Financial Fair Play rules, which they piss all over every fucking year. No, no, you must understand, please, Etihad airlines nusssink to do with Etihad stadium, vot vere you tinking???? And Sheikh Mansoor, Mr Chairman, is completely different Sheikh Mansoor who sign personal cheque to club each year, all perfectly honest and not corrupt at all, honest please…

Because no-one cares about Man City. Not today. Not tonight. This evening, all eyes are on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium of White Hart Lane where my ‘lillywhites’ (who play in blue) take on the Arsenal of Scumsville-just-down-the-road. In what can only be described as the biggest north London derby since the last one. Possibly bigger. Because Spurs and the Arse are in the battle for 4th place. A two horse race with only one winner. And to that winner goes the spoils. European Champions League entry, glory, money and finishing above their rivals. To the loser goes the ignominy of the Europa Cup of sorrow, just some pocket money and the abject shame of seeing your name listed below the enemy.

And tonight we see… who gets a bit closer. It ain’t totally over until the fat lady sings on the last day of the season but unless Arsenal (heaven forbid 1000 times, pth, pth, pth) win tonight, or possibly draw, its still open for both teams to self-destruct as they’ve been doing on and off all season. Spurs and Arsenal between them this season have lost 43 ‘easy wins’, just to prove a point really.

So may the best team win. Which is Spurs. If Arsenal win I’ll throw all my toys out the pram and cry. But if Spurs win? IF SPURS WIN??? Then we’ll probably lose to Burnley on Sunday and we’ll all wonder why we got so excited in the first place.

Nervy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m not a judge. You may have noticed. Because even though I have the wisdom of King Solomon, the brain of an Einstein (just not necessarily the Albert one) and the moral sensitivities of Liam Gallagher, I don’t make judgments. However, if I WAS a judge and I WAS sitting in a court of law dispensing justice, and someone brought me the case of Rooney vs Vardy, I would take that someone and hang them just for wasting the time of the courts, the legal profession and the press over ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The whole, ridiculous, long-winded fiasco, at massive expense to two women who, I’m guessing, are not ‘cost-of-living-sensitive’ at this troubling time. Their increased electricity bill will not preclude the purchase of a 5 grand, Louis Vuitton handbag.

Both women are ‘WAGs’. Which is not the acronym most think, but simply an amalgamation of the words ‘wives’ and ‘slags’. Because the bar for the ultimate WAG, in terms of decency, fame, independence and sleeping with footballers, was set by Victoria Beckham. So its not exactly ‘high’. The original term was ‘Winger’. From ‘Wife who’s a rotten sINGER’. When Jamie Rednapp then married Louise, they left it the same but took out the ‘rotten’. In the case of Colleen and Rebekah, they invented the term WUNTS. You do the maffs.

Colleen is not essentially a bad person. She puts up with Wayne. Rebekah Vardy is, essentially, a very bad person. A horrible person. A WAG and a WUNT by my definitions. I don’t know if she can sing. But she has a history. Of selling personal secrets to newspapers. Before she discovered the pot of gold at the end of every footballer, she sucked up to any ‘sleb’, even ones as minor as Peter Andre. She then reported to the press that his endowment was somewhat short (and thin) of the full Errol Flynn. Rather a disappointment. Therefore she has no barriers to earning a quick buck from the papers for selling ‘stuff’. She’d sell her children’s teeth for the price of a Gucci belt. So did she sell Colleen Rooney’s ‘secrets’, which were put on instagram, but still ‘secret’? Definitely. Does anyone care that she did? No. Would anyone notice if neither of the two was ever seen again? No.

Happy Days

A xxxx

Poor Queenie. My beloved ruler of the waves has decided to miss the State Opening of Parliament for the first time since 1963, when she was pregnant with one of her evil children or other. This time word is that Her Maj is experiencing ‘episodic mobility problems’. Which is a posh way of saying ‘falling over’. Well she is 96, she’s allowed to fall over. It’s just not very cool to do it live on tv whilst walking behind Black Rod. Which is NOT a racist term, nor a porn star, but a job title. All old people fall over. When I go to visit my dad in his care home there’s always heaps of them all over the floor, just dropped off their zimmers and awaiting ‘episodic staff member support for re-erection to the vertical’.

There’s nothing funny about it. It’s dangerous for old people to fall because their bones are brittle and any break would be their last. So why not get the Queen to, kind of, retire? Abdicate. She’s put in the hours, done the hard graft, let her rest for her remaining days. Bonnie Prince Charlie is up to the job. Ok, his face wouldn’t be something you’d really want to lick on postage stamps, or in any situation really, but he can’t help the way he looks. He means well and has grown into a decent fellow, albeit in a tree-huggerish way. And as he’s already about a decade past retirement age, he’s just perfectly ripe to be the next very old monarch. The Queen is retiring! Long live the King!! Until he starts falling over.

Meanwhile, back in Starmerville, the unthinkable has happened. Fed up with demanding the resignations of Boris, Rishi Sunak, Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss and anyone else who utters a sound, he’s now threatening his own!!! Following beer-and-curry-gate, up in Durham during the lockdowns, Sir Kier has announced that should he receive a statutory fine from the police HE MUST GO!! The expression ‘hoist by his own petard’ springs to mind, even though no-one has a clue what it means.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So the other major headline from Thursday’s elections is in Northern Ireland. ‘The Province’. Where, for the first time in that sort-of-nation’s 101 year history, the majority vote went to Sinn Fein. What used to be called, back in the day, ‘the political wing of the IRA’. This could lead to that most extraordinary of events. Which is that one group of very loud, shouting, completely unintelligible people, will be replaced with another… who sound exactly the same! But they’re not the same. They’re not only different, they’re prepared to kill each other for that difference.

The Republicans have won. Those who wish Northern Ireland to be reunited with their brothers in the South, independent bit. The Unionists have lost their right to lead the Irish government. They’re the ones who are fiercely loyal to Great Britain, love the Queen, hate abortion and march through the streets of Belfast every year in parades which cause massive upset and inflammatory situations. In ‘marching season’. Where, like other animals in their ‘mating season’, they are driven by an almost unconscious imperative to pick up a bass drum, put on a bowler hat and march through the streets with all the other Protestants upsetting the Catholics. Generally, no-one minds anyone upsetting Catholics but this is on an industrial scale.

The cruel irony is that it really doesn’t matter who ‘won’ the election because their parliament can’t sit. Because the Unionists have not returned to Stormont since Brexit. Because of the ‘virtual’ border which now exists. And the law there says their parliament cannot sit without both sides represented. Its not good enough if a few nationalists stand on the other side and pretend, even though it sounds the same (loud, shouty, unintelligible). So the Unionists have their victory but its rather hollow, currently.

Spurs draw at Liverpool on Saturday did no favours to either team really. Sounded like a good result for us but just not enough. And Liverpool must accept that Man City just ain’t gonna lose a game. And we go into Thursday night’s Arsenal match uttering numerous prayers, most of which are dependent on winning that game. And that… yeah, well…

Everton’s win yesterday puts massive pressure on Leeds and Burnley. One’s going. The other will have to wait for next May to get relegated. But it does make for an interesting final couple of weeks.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Yep, if you could just pull that noose, just, like, a little bit tighter round my neck, yep, yep… that should be fine.

I’ll come clean. ‘Transparency’ (which I thought was another new gender option initially). State my position honestly. Clearly. Without deliberation:

I don’t like Kier Starmer.

I know what you’re thinking; that I don’t actually like anybody (other than Lila, Joey and Son Heung Min). And you’re close. But no cigar. Though I do reserve most of my real dislike for politicians. Only when they lie and cheat and steal. Which is most of them, most of the time. And always when they commit the ultimate sin: hypocrisy. For them the bounds of my hatred are stretched to limits only normally witnessed during child-birth.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how boring (Kier’s middle name) it is that he only has one single cry: ‘HE MUST GO!!!’ Sometimes he amends it slightly to ‘HE MUST RESIGN’ but that in itself is not exactly evidence of a fertile imagination. And although he’s made his call virtually every time the Prime Minister says or does anything (though it should be noted that most of what the PM does is either illegal, immoral or stupid). But he saved his particular form of endless repetition for the ‘party scandals’.

The Prime Minister has broken covid rules; HE MUST GO!
The Prime Minister has broken the law: HE MUST GO!
The Prime Minister has been fined by the police: HE MUST GO!

And now, in the sweetest denouement anyone could ever wish upon a limp and toothlessly benign and banal leader of Her Majesty’s opposition, all that has now been brought to light ‘in Durham’ has put Sir Kier in the exact position Boris occupied when Starmer called for his resignation. Again and again, like a fucking parrot with only one sentence in its beak. The ‘spontaneous working dinner’ which just had ‘a few beers’ has been revealed to be an organised 15-person party, pre-arranged and pre-invited, by Starmer’s office.

Those wonderful words: ‘position’ and ‘untenable’ and ‘tosser’, possibly ‘hypocritical nonce’ need to be arranged in a sentence, the end of which reads: HE MUST GO!

Few teams GO! from Anfield with anything in the way of points. Spurs did last night, to their eternal credit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really enough points. Which is precisely how Liverpool must be feeling too. Not that we care about them.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There were elections here on Thursday. I went to vote. With Lila and Joey. Who were given free pencils. So it wasn’t a completely wasted event. I voted for the Conservatives because its the fucking council elections so who cares? The Tories generally keep the expenditure down and thus we pay less council tax. Who knows? If services are a bit reduced as a consequence, I’ll just have to put my lawn mowings out for collection once every two weeks. I can live with that.

I think I was the only person in the country who entered the polling station with local considerations in mind. Everyone else, especially here in Barnet, had an agenda. Based on national, governmental politics. Basically: fuck up Boris every which way you can. Because everyone hates Boris. Rightly so. And local elections are always used as a protest against national government, everyone knows that. Because the result doesn’t really do much harm one way or the other, so you can protest almost ‘for free’. Until Labour get in, as they did here in Barnet, and your council tax goes up 400 quid a month. Then its not quite as ‘free’ as it should have been.

So it was always going to be bad for Boris and the Conservatives. Except… it really wasn’t anything like the bloodbath that was expected. Ok, the Tories lost their 3 ‘crown jewels’ of Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster, but they never had a great deal of local control in London anyway. Yet Labour, who won all three of those, did pretty much nothing else of note. Which is strange in our pretty-much 2-party nation. But when you go to put a cross in the box for a Labour person, you see Kier Starmer. And your pencil starts to hover. Then shake a bit. And your arm won’t move it towards the box. Then, at the last moment, it slips into the Lib-Dem box instead. Which, as is always the case, is pretty much like just spoiling your voting paper. A waste of time. Like the Lib-Dems. Who actually had the best result of all the parties from these elections. Due to all the hatred of Boris and Starmer.

All the leaders proclaimed victory. Boris, because it was nothing like as bad as it could have been. Really should have been. Starmer because his poxy party took three London boroughs. And what’s-iss-name, Sir Thungumy, claimed that the Lib Dems will now go on to win the next general election. They’ve suddenly become ‘Manchester City’, even though they play like Scunthorpe.

Then Starmer got summoned by the police for his own little ‘not-a-party’ in Durham during a lockdown and that soured his already sour expression somewhat.

Basically, the people get to vote against all the lies and distortions and spin, then the leaders come out and lie, distort and spin. Learned that lesson then.

Happy Saturday, from the People’s Republic of Barnet.

A xxxx