Big Frank’s Global Domination – Cycle Hire

So what do you do in your free time? Do you play the piano or drop pianos on old ladies for fun? Do you read magazines or use magazines to funnel small rodents into old people’s homes?

If you do, then you should be judged for appalling behaviour. That is not on and I will be using a magazine or an old person to tap you on the nose for good measure.

What I like to do in my free time is to learn about the numerous business ventures that Chris’ dad, Big Frank, has delved into during his retirement. Given that he already has a full-time family to run, including two not very small buckets of chiles, you would think that this would monopolise all of his time. Not so. My investigations have first led me to Coventry where Big Frank runs a cycle hire facility. It is a little unusual that there is no official website for this but I can confirm that they operate at two country parks, Kingsbury Water Park and Ryton Pools County Park, and open at 10:00am at weekends.

Kingsbury Water Park is 600 acres in size with many paths for traffic free cycling. If you want to go further, you can join the Fazeley to Birmingham canal or try the North Warwickshire Cycle way.

Ryton Pools Country Park is situated some 30 miles from Birmingham between Leamington Spa and Ryton-on-Dunsmore. Its smaller than KWP but it does have the start and finish of a lovely 16 mile cross-country run. With gravel paths, the park is perfect for KMX karting.

This information was not at all lifted from another website.

Whilst I am very thankful for his efforts in hiring out cycles to families in the West Midlands area, I am concerned about the exposure and think that with a little nudge he should venture forth with a website to promote the business more.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to Big Frank.

Dear Beans… Indelible Inconclusive Inclusions

Dear Beans,

No matter how hard I try, no matter what ideas I come up with, all of them are disparate in nature. There is no logical flow or group by which they can populate. Each and every single one of them is a Robinson Crusoe living on their own island away from the others, occasionally waving at them with a disinterested look in their eyes.

Could it be that these formulations in my brain that splurge out onto the website are just like me? Are they all selfish and only care about themselves? Shouldn’t these posts be more empathic?

Perhaps it is more to do with being popular. None of my posts are popular, and so when a Chris post comes floating past the island on a makeshift party boat, with Jacuzzis and champagne flowing from illuminated elephant nostrils balanced on a solid gold davenport, they cannot help but look on with fear and loathing (and a little Las Vegas).

What can I do to emulate this success? How can I get in with the “cool kids”? Please help me.

Yours sincerely

Ian

Remembering is Fun – May 2014 Edition

Hashtag. Hashtag. Like. Dislike. FaceTime Instagram Mcdougall.

All of these things make sense to a lot of people. What these people fail to remember though is that remembering, above all, is fun. They’re too busy trying to WhatsApp a soup bowl to Pinterest to remind themselves that all of it is nonsense and unless they start doing things that they can remember, they will never experience the fun that is remembering is fun.

You can’t remember tapping a slide trap on Tinder or going live on Facebook when Charlie chundered into a sieve. These aren’t the kinds of stories you can recount to your grandkids when you’re eighty-five. Where’s the joy? Where’s the laughter? Who is the fun?

Take for instance the following photo:

This was taken almost three years ago when a certain someone turned thirty. But that was merely something going on in the background that nobody really took any notice of. The main event was the filming of what is commonly known as ‘Essex Highway’. As Chris decided to mention David Bowie earlier on this month, I remembered how remembering was fun and that something involving Mr Bowie had occurred once which was fun.

This was before filming had started. Kevin, a keen perfectionist, had spent three hours getting his hair just right. At the point where he uttered such a bilious scream, and we rushed to expect him having trapped his hand in the plughole, only to find out he had just finished styling his hair and it was the smoothest it had ever been. The hair, donated by Crystal Park zoo, smelled of custard creams and answered to the name Alistair. Kevin would high five it after every successful shot.

Alistair would take most of the directing and producing credits for ‘Essex Highway’ and started a successful catering business once filming was over.

Kevin bought a wind farm and fathered seven children.

Stepping Up The Beans – Kevindo Menendez Style

New year. New style. New everything.

That’s the Kevindo Menendez way. When you’ve worked in the bean industry as long as Mr Menendez you know when it’s best to stick to your guns and when to branch out into new territory. While his competitors will be falling back on traditional recipes and boring, predictable flavours in 2017, he looks to the future with a flashy star in his eye and an idea that will break your heart.

Milky beans! All the goodness of milk mixed together with beans for a cockle-warmingly good time. You will get your daily portion of dairy and fibre from one single tin of ‘Kevindo Menendez’s Milky Beans’.

Even though his established, award-winning bean labels went for a more cartoony and playful look, Milky Beans takes that approach and dunks it in a tin of geese. Nothing says glim glam gloop like the Menendez one hundred billion dollar smile. Take a look at those pearly whites!

No more queuing for hours to buy six pints of milk. No more waiting by cows for that perfect moment to strike. No more mixing tomatoes in with your cereal in the hope that it “works”. Milky beans have got your back.

They’re…. reasonable!

Making Christmas

Christmas is a time for miracles. It is also the time for blatant commercialism and funny hats. That said, which it just was, it is also the time for ingenuity and improvisation.

This year Audrey asked for a copy of ‘The Lady in the Van’ on DVD for Christmas, the film based upon the book by Alan Bennett. It was a bit of poor choice really because the film is being shown on terrestrial television for free on Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, prior to being in receipt of this important piece of information, I still went ahead and purchased a copy. Neither I nor Reuben have ever read or seen ‘The Lady in the Van’ and so we decided, based upon the front cover of the DVD, that we would guess what the story was and write and illustrate our own version as an additional present.

It is called ‘T’Lady in T’Van’.

The end result was, quite simply, amazing. I cannot for obvious reasons include a copy here for fear of spoilers for the intended victim, I mean recipient.

What I can include though is a piece of concept art that Reuben came up with during the development process. He decided that the story should involve 80’s martial arts hero and general good egg Chuck Norris and thus drew a picture of him. This was then improved by adding three dimensional eyes.

Special doesn’t even come close.

Newsboost – The Unexpected Return of Perry Chuffin

The world is reeling from the shocking and unexpected return of one of the most successful crooners of the 1980’s.

Award-winning one man laundromat Perry Chuffin is rumoured to not only be touring across the world in 2017 but also that not one but three new albums are expected by this time next year. The details are sketchy, and mainly come from a tall woman in a very quiet room about three miles away. Most importantly though if this is correct then it will mean an end to the self-imposed exile that Chuffin brought upon himself just after the turn of the century.

Chuffing retired in 2003 after almost three decades in the business, citing exhaustion and a general lack of distrust for the general public. He has rarely been seen outside of his multi-million dollar mansion, located on the cusp of Morley, West Yorkshire, except on occasional trips to the local Spar for lightbulbs and sandwich bags.

Chuffin’s manager, Drippy Peptide, has refused to comment at present although a full statement is expected to be issued by his management team after the Christmas period. Even though he has missed the lucrative festive market, the demand for a follow-up record to his quadruple platinum selling album ‘Hold Your Horses’ released in 2002 is so high that fans have pre-ordered this before it has even gone on the open market.

More news will follow as we hear it.

Kareech Mantell and the Key of Destiny

Kareech looked at the ground. Sitting there, isolated from the rest of the bunch, was a singular key. For some reason Kareech always assumed that keys traveled in groups rather than by themselves.

The key shone in the mid-morning light and in it was reflected a distorted, bendy view of the street he currently stood in. There was nobody else around and so, with nothing much to lose, Kareech bent down in the incorrect fashion and picked up the key. It was much smarter than it should be; there were marks along the long edge, little nicks where the key must have been used to open a parcel, help with a struggling tin opener or possibly used to pick food out of an old woman’s teeth. No discernible indications as to whom owned the key or where it should be left in case of emergencies.

It was Sunday, the lazy day, the day for not doing much. Kareech had a very limited ‘to do’ list; other than picking up some salt for his mum and tying his shoelaces that was it for him. The world does not expect much from a fourteen year boy.

At first he left the key in his pocket, to jingle against the metal fixtures of his sad, faded foldy out velcro wallet. Maybe next year he will get a proper wallet rather than something that resembled a permanent reminder that adulthood was still way too far away. At the top of Evershed Terrace, however, he stopped to take in the brisk air and his hand grazed the intimate sides of the key. It was then that he made a decision, a decision that would ultimately change his Sunday and make it the kind of Sunday that he would look back on as an old man and possibly point a pipe up into the air, desperately trying to remember what happened.

Kareech tried the key in Number 1 Evershed Terrace. The metal reached about half a centimetre in before the mechanism forced it to stop; this key was not the key for 1 Evershed Terrace. And so onto Number 2 Evershed Terrace. It reached a little further in before stopping. Another failure. And so onto Number 3 Evershed Terrace. It barely got the tip in before the inevitable prevention and overwhelming sensation of failure. And so onto Number 4 Evershed Terrace…

Flat Kitty – Presidential Candidate

On the eve of the US presidential election, some might say that attempting to put yourself forward as a candidate now would be a foolish exercise.

Such tomfoolery, however, has never been too far outside the realms of the Beans though. One who is strong of heart and stout of mind can achieve great things even with very little time to do so. It is with this in mind then that my fellow flatmate, Flat Kitty, would like to offer herself for this very prestigious of positions.

Why would she be the right person or squashed fabric soft toy for the job? What qualities does she possess that make her better than Clinton or Trump? I’m glad you asked because I have the bullet points directly below to answer those questions:

She has an honest face;
She is an ex-celebrity following the success of her Bosnian Herzegovinian smash hit of a television series with millions of fans;
Though she may not have an actual voice, she has a “voice” that can empower the smallest of people and inspire the brightest of voters;
There is nothing that she is not willing to do to get your vote;
She once popped a wheelie at the Royal Variety Performance (sources still waiting to be confirmed at this point).

As you can see, there is enough scrabbled together here to convince even the most sternest of individuals that Flat Kitty is a candidate that you can trust and is, ultimately, whom America is crying out for to lead them to a three dimensional multi-faceted glowing shoebox of tomorrow.

That and she makes a mean salad nicoise.

Pouring
Beans

Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver