Calendar expansion pack delivery

The unprecedented girth of this year’s Pouring Beans Calendar has caused many of us difficulty, as we found that only eleven months would fit into the calendar’s patented display case. Thankfully, help is now at hand.

Your delivery of an official Pouring Beans Calendar Patented Display Case Expansion Pack Deluxe™ will take place shortly, and provides more space than is required even for the 2026 Calendar’s pages, which are printed on the same stuff they use for invitations to a coronation.

You will shortly receive:

2x Brick Corner 1x2x2, white

2x Brick 1×6, white

3x Brick 1×8, white

You will additionally receive any nitrile O-rings (20mm diameter) that you may have previously requested as part of the same package.

We recommend inserting these pieces as a new layer in the Display Case, and removing one layer of flat pieces, to obtain the optimum space for your 2026 Calendar. The additional pieces may be stored on the back of the Display Case and brought back into use in future years if Phil at work decides to order even more absurdly luxurious paper than this. However, we are now confident that, whatever arrangement you decide to settle upon, your Display Case is now capable of adapting to any calendar thickness eventuality.

Yours sincerely,

The Pouring Beans Calendar Customer Fulfilment Team

Phrase phase competition – Jan

Language is in a constant state of fluidity.

There, I started with something sensible for once. You know when you’re racking your brain and you realise you’re full of old expressions, catchphrases and adages that you’ve picked up along the way? Where do they all come from? How does someone uttering a sentence once suddenly become a phrase used hundreds of years later?

These days, it all comes from the Internet and lasts roughly about as long as the little orb’s attention span on a bad day. What is hilarious and prevalent one day is cringe and desperate the next. We need a more solid approach to this. Our lives are filled with throwaway matter so let’s bandage up 2026 by trying to create a brand new expression / phrase / something. I’ll be running a competition over the next few months and all being well, with the usual helpful contributions from Chris, we should be able to craft something exciting.

This month, we have five stunning entries to tantalise your verbal taste buds.

Silicon valley, tin can alley – when someone loses all their wealth and is reduced to nothing but poverty
Whatever next, Timothy? – a general expression to say when you don’t know what to say, even if there’s not a Timothy nearby
I lost my hat on the treadmill of life – response to a question where you want to avoid the real answer and need to leave quickly
Cough it up, wank bread – a work in progress (insults are hard)
Sometimes you make the crinkle, sometimes the crinkle you make – when you want to sound wise without displaying any proper evidence of this

There we go. I await your feedback. I’ll also be taking any nominations in the comments section so if you have something you say to yourself that nobody else does, and you wish to share it with the world, then come on over like Shania Twain and let us know!

The Face Update – Round Four

Hello and welcome back to my face.

It has been almost six years since the last update on my face and a lot has happened since then.

Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. Other than finding more grey hairs, more wrinkles and some weird lines appearing to the sides of my cheeks, it’s pretty much business as usual. My face keeps going on and on, and there’s not much you can do to stop it.

The photo I took isn’t great and I’ll have to apologise for the lack of fidelity; those lines keep appearing on all my photos, must be something to do with the lens. Let’s catch up with my face:

Original Eyes – due to the recent addition of the Orb, they’re now running double, sometimes triple time. The strain is much more visible and in order to stay awake, more coffee has been input which results in bigger pupils and the chance of accidentally smashing a plate has increased sevenfold.
Looking (tired) Eyes – even the original Eyes need to take a break every now and then. The LTEs are there to make me look dazed and confused.
Confused Eyes – when even the most simple of tasks is way beyond me, such as finding a pen that works or opening a door without hitting myself with it.
Inexplicably Happy Eyes – used for when the Orb gets to spend some time with grandma and grandpa. You look all weepy as though it’s so difficult to leave him behind and then whip out the IHEs when you’re reversing out of the driveway at 30mph.
Spare Eyes – when all the other Eyes have been ran into the ground, I’m going to need a pair to get me back to the eye hospital to get more installed. They only last 24hrs but they’re worth it. You gotta have a spare.

I haven’t really felt the need to add any new pairs in ages. The fluctuations in the market, along with the ever-increasing price of eyes, has forced me to rely on most of the same ones from 2020. I do feel sorry for the Original Eyes who every day shoulder such a huge strain for the rest of the face. If I can find the time, I’ll send them away to a fancy spa for the weekend for rest and recuperation.

Thankfully there hasn’t been much need for eyes other than your day-to-day activities. If I was asked to, I don’t know, start planning a party for Dua Lipa I’d have to refuse; I don’t have the eyes to spare, Dua, ask someone else.

Jeez. Every Tuesday.

Good boy

Have you been a good boy? There’s one sure-fire way to find out.

I’m sure you know this, but all we have to do is look underneath the priority seating in coach 4 of the 21.53 South Western Railway service from Guildford to Farnham.

Let’s have a look now.

Yes, there we are. So, have you been a good boy?

You have! Well done.

Can we be serious, please?

I need you to all listen to me very carefully when I say this. I am deadly serious.

I need you to understand that there is a time for nonsense and there is also a time for being serious. I am the most serious I’ve ever been without crossing that line and turning into Serious Ian again (nobody wants that).

If we’re to start this new year fresh then you’re all going to have to give me enough time to eat my oranges.

I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want you running into my house with whatever gibberish you need to tell me; it can wait. I need to take some time to eat my oranges.

Whatever you need to tell me, put a pin it in and try me the next day. Whatever job needs doing, you’re going to have to give me some extra time to get it finished. I’ve got oranges to eat and I won’t let anyone get in my way.

There. I’ve said it. Don’t get upset because I’m telling everyone the same thing. My oranges come first.

2026 State of the Beans Address

Good evening, and… can you hear me? Sorry, I thought I was muted. Good evening, and thank you for joining me via this video link. I am currently inside the crater of an active volcano and therefore unable to join you in person, but I trust that the pub function room is comfortable and that the buffet of assorted crisps and corn-based snack foods are going down well.

My name is His Holy Eminence The Right Honourable Lieutenant Colonel Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, QC (Retired), KBE (Retired, Reinstated), KVCO. It is my great pleasure to have the honour of presenting this, the twelfth annual State of the Beans Address.

Guide to the Genus Melocaeruledus: The Cave Fladger

2025 is almost done, and what better way to wecome in 2026 than with another terrifying creature? Yes, youve guessed it, its fladger time again! This time we head underground in search of one of the most unique melocaeruledi, the Cave Fladger…

Cave Fladger

Scientific Name: Melocaeruledus troglolucens (troglo = of caves, lucens = glowing or shining)

Common Names: The Cave Fladger, Ghost Fladger, Damp Gimp Wasp

Habitat: Limestone caves, subterranean rivers.

Description: The pallid, almost glassy skin of the Cave Fladger reveals an intricate network of grey veins. It appears to glow when hit with torchlight. Its huge, sensitive ears allow audible nagivation, granting it almost silent flight in utter darkness. The Cave Fladger’s diet consists chiefly of beetles, moths, and blind cave shrimp

Behaviour: The Cave Fladger is mostly timid in nature, and will try its best to hide from humans who find thier nests. They have been known to work as a pack in defence of thier homes or young, emmitting a high pitched squeel, similar to that of a human baby, to gather support from others.

Notes: Legends claim their appearance can predict misfortune, though this may be attributed to startled cavers falling to their demise upon being greeted by a pack of screaming translucent gimp wasps.

Newsboost – New Year’s Chris

As the Chris DNA continues to run amok in all parts of the modern 21st century, it was left to experts to predict just how bad it would be at the end or the year and what monstrosities we would have to face during the festive season.

Big money was riding on a couple of obvious options: Chris spliced into a mecha Santa, Chris spliced into one or all of Santa’s reindeers, some kind of I don’t know Raymond Briggs snowman Chris hybrid with bells on, and the ultimate horror of horrors, Mariah Chris-tified Carey belting, ‘All I want for Chris-mas is shoes’.

It was egg on all of our collective faces though when people in the street started to look and point at a familiar landmark in London which seemed to be undergoing a transformation. Behold!

Big Ben was no more. Big Chris with his big man work ethic had muscled in and now the capital city was doomed.

Ding dong, merrily on high. It’s only a matter of time before he captures what he needs and moves onto much more serious buildings like MI5, Scotland Yard, the British Museum, that Subway in York that almost didn’t serve me because I was pretty drunk, and anything owned by Noel Edmonds.

2026 will have to start with a shriek and a scream. Happy New Year, everyone.