Andy's Glasses

Yesterday was the final day of the 2021/22 Premier League Season. In case you missed that. Or weren’t aware. And it was, in the final matches, all played together at 4 o’clock, even for those who’ve been forced to watch in excess of 14,572 games so far this year, it was spectacular. Down to the wire. Nail-biting. Touch and go. Everything to play for. You pick your cliche, pick your metaphor, double it and that’s how exciting it was.

Particularly as, for Spurs fans, and Arsenal fans too, one of the ‘big questions’ which was to be answered on this most holy of days, was ‘which of those 2 would make it to the Champions League, and which would rot in Thursday night mediocrity, forever labelled as LOSERS!!!’ And that question was mercifully answered early on. As Spurs were knocking in the goals at Norwich, it became meaningless what events unfolded at the Emirates. The only fortunate thing for Arsenal is that Spurs fans are notoriously kind, gentle, sympathetic and not prone to gloating, sarcasm or piss-taking.

So we could all relax and concentrate on the massive turmoil being played out at the very top and very bottom of the league. And all four of the matches concerned were as wild and unpredictable as matches could be. Man plans, God laughs. That possibly summed up the situation as Liverpool went 1-0 down in 3 minutes of their ‘must win’ match, equalising a bit later before Man City went 1-0 down in theirs. Spoiler alert: Man City won the league. With amazing difficulty, for the first 65 minutes but win they did.

At the other end, Burnley did what they do best and Leeds didn’t. Which is to lose matches. Though Leeds, with their 90th minute relegation-avoiding goal, they have scored 8 times this season so late in the game. Their prize is that they can go down next year.

So the season’s over, its all decided. But just like ‘the king is dead; long live the king!!!’, we’re already into next season. The buying, the selling, the promises, the lies, the excitement and, as ever, that damnable hope.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

So what do you do in a heatwave? You play tennis. Oh, can’t do that. Well, I can soon, as the doc informed me. Gently (what the fuck does that even mean? If you’re ‘gentle’ then its not ‘sport’, but I shall try) and progressively, but I could be back within weeks. Its been so easy I might get the other shoulder replaced too. Even though its perfectly fine and healthy. Just because then I’d be just a little bit more ‘Terminator’ but without the constant, heads-up, digital display, because it would get in the way when I’m watching football.

And this is an English ‘heatwave’ where temperatures reached almost 20 degrees of Celsius for several minutes at a time!

So we went and picked up the very very old’uns and brought them back here for tea. With the very very young-uns. Who don’t drink tea but they make a massive mess anyway. And as ‘the dads’ both live in the same care home, which is about 5 minutes away, it sounds ‘easy’. And it is. Ish. I go to the home where both are waiting in reception, normally asleep. Its what you do when you in your late 90s. They zimmer-up and accompany me to the car, which is 7 yards from their door. That takes ten minutes, plus another ten to ‘fold’ them into their seats and get them belted. Then comes the major task of the day. Getting two zimmer frames into a car. I don’t think they build cars to accommodate such things, even when folded. Cos ‘folding’ normally implies improved ergonomics, whereas we all know that with zimmers it just shifts the lumps, bumps and legs elsewhere with no space saving whatsoever. I think it actually makes them bigger.

Then they’re here, in the garden, in the sunshine, with Lila and Joey running round ignoring them completely. Because children are attracted to bright colours and things that move, same as animals. And old people lack the brightness and mobility to hold their great-grandchildren’s attention for… well, at all really. And my dad likes my ‘tea’. Which is indeed tea but also what we call ‘the full Ashkenazi’. Because it contains every major food-group which will probably be banned next year. But my dad, at about 8 stone in his shoes and including his Zimmer, is not really an obesity-risk. And smoked salmon is ‘oily fish’, innit? Which is really healthy. Itself something rare and unusual in the world of East European Jewish food.

And to have four generations together is magical. Even if one generation spends about 2 hours watering the garden with the hose to the point of flooding.

Spurs have played relegated teams 5 times on the last day of the season. And lost 3 of those games. I intend to sue the Sunday Times for telling me that and causing me stress.

Happy Final Day Sunday

A xxxx

Just had to post this photo today. Not just because this 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR has just become the most expensive car ever, at £114million, not even because Mercedes only ever made two of them, one for racing and this one, not EVENNNNN because it had a straight-8 engine, giving it a bonnet the length of a swimming pool. But because, being known as the ‘Mona Lisa of cars’, it is quite simply exquisite. A thing of almost infinite beauty. Like Audrey Hepburn. Like a Cruyff turn. Like my rhododendron bush now in full bloom. Like Garry Sobers hitting six 6s in an over. Like me. Just perfection.

But my brothers in the RMT (Rail Maritime and Transport workers union) are going on strike! Because… well, because we can. Led by our esteemed leader, Mick Lynch (£124 grand a year, plus ‘benefits’), we are all (probably… possibly) in agreement that the only way to secure… whatever is insecure, whatever is unfair or pretty much, to give us all a bit more of everything, is to hold a strike. Talking is for tossers. For London-based rich people who like words instead of actions because they confuse thick people like me. So rather than enter ‘discussions’ and ‘talks’ and ‘neg-oh-shiashans’ and shit, we just gonna cut to the chase and bring the entire fucking country to its knees for a few days, so they know who they’re dealing with!

It’s a simple matter really. The rail operators, those bastard fascists and fat-cats wot own the trains, were bailed out during the pandemic. 16 billion quid’s worth of bailout. But its not, like, ‘real’ money because they borrowed it from the government. Ok, from you. Same difference. And our guv’nor, Mick, is worried that to pay this almost impossible sum back, they might either try to make redundancies or, worse still, change our working pay and/or conditions. And that’s why we love our union. Because any company, faced with an immense, unsustainable level of debt, will try to make cuts somewhere. Well NOT ON MY WATCH, THEY WON’T!! Well, Mick Lynch’s watch, anyway. He not only wants security for jobs and pay, but also a GUARANTEE that there will be ‘no detrimental change to working practices’. Which means if I’m off sick for 3 months, injured, on full pay, I can still go skiing with the kids, windsurf with the wife and climb the north face of Annapurna. My mate Jim is an operator of a piece of equipment which hasn’t been used since the First World War. He drinks a lot of tea for his £75 grand a year, and we need to ensure that not just his job, but THAT job is maintained for generations to come to ensure fairness and equality for lazy bastards who do absolutely nothing. We must support our union and agree to the strike.

Happy Militant Saturday

A xxxx

At present, in the UK (statistics may vary from nation to nation but the current number purely represents the ‘don’t care ‘bout no-one else’ attitude to which we all adhere), 28% of the population are classified as ‘obese’, whilst 34% are ‘healthy’. You don’t have to be Einstein to be seriously worried about the remaining 38% who are neither. Are they invisible? Too light to weigh? Too heavy to put on the scales?? I mean, we need to know.

Because the worry is that by 2027 one third of the population will remain ‘healthy’ whilst another third will be classified as ‘obese’. The third third, in case you’re worried, like I am, represents ‘overweight’, that nether world where you’re too fat to be healthy but not quite fat enough to be an official ‘fat bastard’. It’s the calorific equivalent of being an agnostic rather than an atheist. And those people really should learn to commit.

By 2040 70% of the population will be either ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’.

But then you have to remember that these are just statistics. Not even the crunching of meaningful data, but ‘projecting’, looking into the crystal ball of t-tests and normal distributions to try and predict the future. Like Nostradamus but with a veil of scientific validity. They can’t predict the weather for tomorrow but they know how much every single member of our 60 million population is going to eat forever.

There’s another interpretation. Just as valid. If you look at the numbers a slightly different way. Thinking outside of the box (of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes).

‘Fatness’ is going to increase by 6% by 2027. They’re assuming that’ll be 6% more people becoming ‘obese’. But I propose that it might just mean that the existing 28% obese ones of the population just increase their own intake by 6%!!! Meaning the fat get fatter, the rest stay the same. There is a precedent: the rich get richer. Same thing, different units of measurement.

My main worry, as a ‘healthy person’ who eats more than any fat bastard, is that they’ll take all the food. Leaving us ‘healthy’ ones with nothing but lettuce and broccoli. Or worse still, that the fat may just start eating the thin people. Big worry.

To combat this Mars bars have thought of the most brilliant thing ever. A Mars bar which is 24% lower in calories!! And so clever, they did this by… making it about 24% smaller. Almost as if ‘the less you eat the healthier you may become’!! We need to work on the statistics there before announcing it.

Happy HEALTHY Thursday

A xxxx

Jake Daniels (no relation), a 17 year old from somewhere up north, has ‘come out’ as gay. Nothing newsworthy there then. Plenty of gay people around, even up north. I met one in Watford once. But Jake is a professional footballer. Ooooohhhhh. So that is different. Very, very different. Because there is the ‘real world’, where people at least have to act in a decent, caring, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate and tolerant manner. And then there’s ‘football’, where none of that is even acceptable. To compare Jake to Tom Daly is a nonsense, possibly a nonce-ense, because diving is an individual sport which, for the purposes of this discussion, is fundamentally different. And in fact any sport is fundamentally different to football when it comes to the mentality of the players and more importantly, the fans. Which is why no footballer has ‘come out’ since Justin Fashanu. Who did so in 1990 and had killed himself by 1997. And you don’t kill yourself because of an excessive outpouring of communal support and love.

The social norms on acceptable behaviour end about half a mile from any football ground. Where the fighting starts. Ok, not as bad as it was, but there’s some for whom football and violence are synonymous. Similarly, the rules about sexism, racism, any-fucking-ism are suspended for the 90 minutes of play. And, more importantly, are lodged into the mindset of many fans as part of their value system. 100 million quid for Lukaku is ‘good value’ and so is cat-calling women, monkey-chanting at black players and calling your mate ‘gay’ because he’s only drinking 6 pints today.

Gareth Thomas, the wonderful Welsh rugby player, came out but just before his retirement from the game. He’d played 100 times for Wales, displayed levels of bravery and commitment beyond any call of duty and basically, proved himself more ‘manly’ than any man of any sexual preference. Possibly because he felt he had something to prove, but a man to be greatly admired.

When ‘Fash’ came out he suffered massively from the fans. And there was no social media back then. I sincerely hope young Jake is going to disconnect from Instagram, Twitter, all of it, for his own sake. Because it will be relentless. From opposing fans it will be constant. From his own fans, as Marcus Rashford will confirm, it’ll be worse if he has a bad day at the office. And he’ll be taunted mercilessly by opposing players trying to ‘wind him up’. Trying to get him to slap them.

I have nothing but admiration for this dude. I’m just not sure the whole world of ‘football’ is ready to accept its diversity quota in any meaningful way. Especially if Sharia law is the rule book at Newcastle. For whom I have nothing but thanks, admiration and love. Today.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

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