Cat in the wayCats like to get in the way. Sitting in the middle of the hallway or on top of the thing you’re trying to use.
Still, I’ve never seen a cat so wilfully in everyone’s way, or giving off such a determined display of not giving a damn, as this cat.
For reasons I cannot explain, this cat is sitting right in the middle of the main entrance to the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford, one of the largest and busiest hospitals in the south of England. Everyone just had to go around it.
Stupid cat.
One from the Archives – ‘You Don’t Weep’(A cynical young man sits at a table judging, that’s you (Kevin), and two men walk past).
Chris: Look at that cynical young man there.
Ian: What’s he doing?
(Intense close-up of your (Kevin’s) face)
Chris: He’s judging fruit because even though it carries qualities that can assist with a sexy, varied diet, too much can still mess with your face podge.
Ian: Oh, THAT!
Chris: STOP JUDGING FRUIT, INFANT!
Kev: Leave me alone, let me judge in peace.
Ian: But don’t you realise that fruit doesn’t mean you any harm? It doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
Chris: It’s not out to get you.
Kev: I don’t care! Not enough people *cannot read what the bottom line says due to bad photocopying*
Ian: Look at the beauty of that lemon! It’s perfectly cylindrical, it’s smoothness, it’s balance of danger and sweetness. Doesn’t it make you want to…
Kev: CRY? No. NEVER!
Chris: Surely it must, sir. You are no golem.
Kev: No. I never cry.
(Shock horror: SEVERE GASP)
Ian: He doesn’t cry.
Chris: This imbalance will be bad, awful, awful bad.
Ian: Care to explain with the use of this delicate pulley system?
Chris: No. Follow me.
(Ian and Chris walk offscreen to a white board)
*Presumably Chris is talking* Man. Man doesn’t want to cry but he does. He has to or this happens.
(An explosion goes off)
Ian: What was that?
Chris: That’s what happens when you try to fuck with nature.
Ian: Oooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Chris: To put it like this, if man does not cry, the emotional chumblies vibrate and vibrate. If liquid is not spilt then they catch fire and the whole body explodes.
Ian: Science is mean!
Chris: It sure is, Timmy.
Ian: It’s Ian.
Chris: Okay.
(Back to Kevin) (?)
Ian: So this man needs to cry.
Chris: Exactly.
Ian: So how do we do that?
Chris: If science can cause a perfectly healthy individual to explode then science can also be harnessed for good.
Ian: Holy pickles!
Chris: What we need is…
(Quick shots: plunger, onions, copy of the film ‘Steel Magnolias’)
Then all we need to do is…
(Chris plungers the side of Kev’s head, then he rubs onions into his eyes, lastly he shows him a copy of ‘Steel Magnolias’ on the telly)
Ian: It sounds easy.
Chris: It’s already done (close up of Chris) Romeo Dunne.
(The cynical man is sat crying at his table)
Chris: Oh dear.
Ian: What’s wrong with him?
Chris: It appears as though the science was too much for him. He’s been turned into a jibbering idiot.
Ian: Is that why he’s sat crying over some knives?
Kev: (between sobs) They just… don’t get the same respect… as forks. It’s so upsetting.
Chris: We may need to think about this some more. He’s gone from one extreme to the other. I expect if you hold anything up in front of him he’ll cry even harder.
(Ian holds up a yo-yo, Kev weeps harder)
Ian You were right.
Chris: We need MORE SCIENCE!
(Quick shots: plunger, iron pipes, a copy of ‘Universal Solider’)
Chris plungers back tough back (?) into Kevin’s head, sticks the pipes down his back).
Chris: Not too much ‘Universal Solider’, Timmy, we don’t want him as cynical as he was before.
Ian: Ten four.
(Kev sits at a table)
Ian: How do you feel?
Kev: I’m not sure. I’m a little teary (pulls a face) but I’m also extremely pissed off at this Kinder Egg. The toy on it is crap.
Ian: Is that a result?
Chris: I guess it’ll have to do!
(Both Ian and Chris freeze in mid-hearty chuckle. Kev falls off his chair)
EPILOGUE
Chris: Crying is perfectly natural. Everyone does it, even pigeons and wolverines. They don’t do it in public but hidden behind those bushes and up on those high buildings they are bawling like bitches.
Ian: Here’s a tip, cry into a towel. It muffles the noise and catches the excess, thus removing the need for tissues.
Chris: Thank you, Timmy.
Ian: How often do you cry, sir?
(close-up of Chris’ face)
Chris: TWICE A DAY. THAT’S WHAT I SAY!
END!
Newsboost – Livin’ La Vida LiarShock news today as female inspiration for hit single by Ricky Martin reveals that a lot of the information contained in the song is, “factually incorrect”.
Bernadette ‘Bernie’ Wendell of Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, held a press conference in her home town earlier on today to set the record straight.
She was completely unaware that the song was about her for twenty-five years and it was only when a friend recently played it to her that she recognised some of the key characteristics of the woman in the song as relating to her.
“I was completely taken aback when I realised the song was about me. I had relocated to Thailand for a few years because of work so when it was first released in 1999 I never got to hear it. Latin American pop music wasn’t really their kind of thing over in that side of the world. When Doris, my neighbour, was playing the song during a recent barbeque, you know, when the weather was briefly nice on that weekend, you know the one, I hear the lyrics and BOOM I knew it was about me.”
Mrs Wendell, now married with three children, was asked how she came to meet Mr Martin given the distance between Grimsby and Puerto Rico, where the singer was living at the time. “Enrique was here doing some promo work. You know that transition period between when he was singing in Spanish and thinking about moving to English? He was over ‘ere working the clubs, trying out some new material. Me and him had a bit of a brief spark and we dated for a few weeks when he was in the area. He did love a bit of Yellowbelly cheese I can tell you.”
Mrs Wendell then went on to explain the inconsistencies with the song lyrics.
“He’s such an exaggerator. One time he came over to mine soaking wet so I told him to take his clothes off so I could put them through the drier. Whilst the cycle was on, my favourite song came on the radio and we danced outside in the back garden. The neighbours thought we were mental but that was the kind of thing you did in the late 90’s. Nobody gave a flying fuck. All that sorcery nonsense? I didn’t like walking under ladders, I hardly think that makes me “into” superstitions.”
One of the lowly journalists towards the back of the room then asked if she was also guilty of having, “a new addiction every day and night,” and whether she’d ever slipped drugs into Mr Martin’s drinks. “If anything, it’s the other way round. One time I felt awful, had the squits for a few days. I asked him to buy me some Immodium from the chemist on the way to mine. What did he do? He bought Dulcolax ‘cos he got confused and wasn’t sure. I didn’t check the bottle, took one and it was like a brown wave all night. Horrendous!”
The times and dates of Mrs Wendell’s account seem to match up with Mr Martin’s work schedule at the time, at least according to what little information we have to hand. Mr Martin and his publicist are yet to comment.
Bit of a failI had big plans, huge plans. These plans were colossal and they were monstrous.
If you tried to eat them then you’d either break your jaw trying to fit them in your mouth or you’d have to stop maybe halfway through because you couldn’t have anymore, you were stuffed to the max. They were gigantic.
My marvellous post will have to wait for another time. Until then, feast your eyes on this quiche that my brother served us the last time we were in Leeds. He kept bigging it up (no pun intended), saying how epic it was, how it dwarfed a regular sized quiche and…
Well, it is slightly larger than your average quiche and that’s about it. When you compare it to the Duplo brick though it looks humongous.
Four Word Reviews: The Christmas AlbumIt’s April, which means that rising sense of child-like excitement you feel is thanks to Christmas. Here in the Four Word Review lounge we like to crack out a Christmas album around this time of the year (see previous scrapes with Mahalia, Streisand, Bublé and Jewel); now, as the log crackles on the fire and the snow falls outside, it’s time to drop the needle on another. Unfortunately the only festive album I seem to have in store is this one: it’s “The Christmas Album” by the Tweenies.
ObligationsI’m a man of my word and let nobody say otherwise (unless it’s me stating I’m going to get new tyres for my car because I keep saying it and I still haven’t done it yet). It’s this simple principle that I stick to in order for people to believe and trust me as their brother, boyfriend, friend or tree surgeon.
When I recently returned home to visit family, my brother surprised me with the admission that they had been round the charity shops and my nieces had bought some video games for me. A lovely gesture, or course, and one which didn’t initially fill me with a sense of dread. It was only when I remembered the quality of video games available in charity shops that my stomach turned upside-down and inside-out: previous years FIFA games, cricket and other lame sports titles, shovelware Nintendo Wii games where the quality is the same as my arse.
I was handed four Nintendo DS titles and, boy, am I a lucky person. Four excellent condition clangers for my collection. I am not a snob, dear reader, for as the keen chef can tell the good fruit from the bad fruit I can let you know mostly what a good game is and what isn’t. This stack was given to me to review by my brother and that is exactly what I am going to do. I certainly don’t want to play them and you certainly don’t want to read what I have to say, yet this is how it’s going down.
It was either that or trade them in for 40p.
Suggested new sloganTen years ago, when the New Beans was still new, we had a discussion about a marketing slogan for the website. Eventually we settled on Pouring Beans: The Thinking Man’s Casserole which adorns all of our advertising to this day.
Since then a whole decade has gone by, and I wonder if it’s time for a new slogan to appeal to the world of 2024. Until recently I wasn’t sure what I could ever suggest that would beat the current one, but a visit to a coffee shop bathroom in London last week gave me the answer.
One Team. One Pream. We.
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