Avatar No judgement here

I get it.

You’re out with the lads and you’re having a great time. You’ve been on the bevs for most of the afternoon and now the evening. The night is creeping in. You haven’t eaten in hours.

You catch the last bus home and even though your sense of timing for public transport is spot on, by the time you reach your destination your favourite takeaway is closed.

Curses, you think, why must they shut this early? Don’t they want my business? Don’t they want my £2.50 for a bag of chips (or whatever your regional financial equivalent is – we all know rubbish London pounds are)?

Left with no option but to raid the cupboards, your choices are slim. The freezer is practically empty too because you’re due a food shop tomorrow. It’s time to face facts; waiting over two hours for a McDelivery isn’t going to help anything. You’re already whammed and you need something to soak up the alcohol.

It’s time to do something drastic.

It’s time to open that tin youve been saving for an emergency.

You wake up the next day with a thick, brown, meaty rim around your lips and you have no idea how it got there.

Avatar Airport review: Lima


Don’t worry, I’m not going to review every airport we go to. Already I’ve saved you from having to hear my thoughts on Heathrow, Cusco International, Puerto Maldonado and the questionably-named Baltra Ecological Airport in the Galapagos, which is where I’m sitting as I write this.

But you don’t get to escape the big hitters. Adopt the brace position as we head for Lima.

Read More: Airport review: Lima »

Avatar Phase phrase competition – August

Ah ha! What a blinder of a month July was. Absolutely hilarious. I know I’ll be quoting some of them for years to come and soon everyone else will be too. When it comes to awards season, July will be the one to beat.

*awkward coughing and the sound of shuffling papers*

Where do we go from here then? What could August possibly offer to beat the wunderkind that was the previous month? Onwards and upwards, dear viewer, let’s keep on choogling:

  • Read my pants, baby, you’re catching the train to spanksville – guaranteed gold chat-up line for the younger crowd
  • Bend your hands the wrong way and you’ll never tell me the right time – sounds like the wise words of a kind soul, as long as you don’t think about it too much
  • You left it too late and now it’s snouts for everyone – way to kick someone when they’re already down, doesn’t have to specifically be about serving food to people
  • Tickle my cloisters, it’s time for a party! – shout it as you enter a room to get it buzzing like a fly gym
  • Cap it sucker, you’re on borrowed time – cool tough guy phrase to knock out when you’re wasting bad guys

Can you feel the love tonight?

Let me know if there’s anything that YOU say that could be a potential phrase. We’re past the halfway point, hurtling towards the autumnal season, so there may be a special seasonal variation coming up soon (if I can remember that is).

Avatar PSA – don’t eat the oreos

Everyone loves delicious oreos.

Mmmm, right? Nobody can resist the tasty taste of oreos because there’s something for everyone. Love biscuit? Got you. Love squishy things in the middle of biscuits? You’re covered. Love ripping things in half to feel superior over something for once when you’re trapped in a horrific existence where you’re in control of nothing? Also this!

There are, however, flavours of oreos that should not exist and this is one of them:

Whatever you do, don’t eat the ice cream flavour oreos.

I found these being sold for cheap and my curiosity got the better of me. They look okay, let’s give these a go, I thought. I was so very, very wrong.

When you first put one in your mouth everything seems okay, nothing out of place here. It’s the aftertaste that really kills the entire experience. The closest thing I can compare it to is it’s as though you’ve swallowed a blueberry vape. Someone turned the vape juice into a solid and stuck it in an oreo.

It’s disgusting. You have been warned.

Avatar Airport review: Bogotá

I may be away for a while, but I still have a commitment to do four posts a month here on the Beans, so I’ve decided to exploit something I’ll be doing a lot, which is visiting airports. Please enjoy this first in a thrilling series of airport reviews.

El Dorado International Airport, Bogotá, Colombia

We spent about four hours here in between flights, arriving at about 3.30am and leaving shortly before 8am.

Despite it being a stupid time of the morning, most shops were open, staffed by people who looked like they wished they didn’t have to man a souvenir shop at 3am. As a result we had the option to buy any amount of slightly tacky Colombia-branded tourist tat. We did not bother with this.

Airport seating was plentiful, with banks of seats everywhere and no shortage of places to sit even when the gate started filling up with passengers. However the seats were hard and upright and I did not enjoy sitting on them for nearly four hours. I give the seating 6/10.

Apart from buying some breakfast, which took 25 minutes to arrive even though there was nobody else waiting, my only interaction with the locals was to meet this charming Colombian lady who had a cargo of bananas and knew how to use them. Kate didn’t like her as much as I did.

Overall this was not a bad place to spend four hours in the middle of the night and my impression of Colombia, having only seen the inside of the airport, was broadly positive.

I award El Dorado International Airport 7 planes out of 10.

Avatar Giddy Strider’s Fields

I am a huge fan of the band The Long Blondes.

They only managed to release two albums in their lifetime before breaking up (if you don’t count the early singles collection of course), which is a damn fine shame. They’re on regular rotation at home and in the car.

You know when you think you know the lyrics to a song but then when you’re singing along you’re missing words out? Such was the case recently when playing one of the singles from their first album, ‘Giddy Stratospheres’. It’s a catchy song about breaking up with someone because they’re boring and dragging you down; lovely stuff.

Not wanting to appear foolish, I decided to look up the lyrics to see if I was singing the right words. Heaven forbid that someone should hear me and think I was some kind of fake fan! The horror!

Unfortunately the first effort that came up appeared to be AI giving it a go and, well, see for yourself:

If you sing it this way, it sounds as though the guy’s girlfriend won’t take him to somewhere called Giddy Striders Fields. Perhaps it’s his favourite place for a kick about with the lads? Maybe he likes riding the horses at the weekend? Who knows.

I don’t think I’ll be able to sing the right words now given the sheer lunacy of AI and their attempt.

Avatar Cheese sponsorship

I think I’ve found the weirdest food marketing ploy since special edition Elton John Marmite.

The other week we decided to get some nice burgers from the butcher and have a home made burger night. (It was absolutely banging, thanks for asking.) We needed cheese for that, obviously, so we got ourselves a pack of sliced Jarlsberg.

The cheese was, as you would expect, perfectly aged for maximum flavour, a source of calcium, high in protein, and somehow lactose free. (I don’t understand the last bit, it’s cheese, but OK, that must be something to do with the secret recipe.) But this Jarlsberg has another, much more unexpected, property.

Yes, this is the official cheese sponsor of The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical. Not the film, you understand, no – presumably another cheese sponsors that. But Jarlsberg is the cheese providing the financial backing for the stage musical, and presumably reaping the benefits of the show’s fans when they come pouring out of the theatre, hungry for cheese, and all rush to the dairy aisle of the nearest supermarket to get themselves a pack of ten slices of medium strength Dutch cheese.