Bean Grab – Jan 2020!Look everyone, look over there…
Just there, you see that green bit, yeah, just behind that… no left a bit.
Haha, whilst you’re all looking over there I’m sneaking off to Chris’ statistical bean cupboard and pinching one. What are you going to do? You’re off looking at that thing over there.
Got one!
Whats that? You cant see it? Keep looking… Yeah just behind that bush….
Suckers.
2020 State of the Beans AddressGood day to you all. Thank you. You’re very kind.
My name is Sergeant-Major Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, KBE. It is a great privilege to join you here at Fairburn Ings visitor centre for the sixth annual State of the Beans Address. Please could I request that you do not feed the ducks until the formalities have concluded, and also please don’t feed any of the crispy Peking duck to the ducks. The RSPB are trying to avoid another Mad Cow Disease type incident with their mallards.
Seductively readableI mean, I’m as horrified as you are to discover that something we thought had come directly from Ian’s brain is actually real, so I apologise now for having to make you aware of this, but it has to be done.
She’s out there, not just real but actually writing books. Presumably it’s the same publisher as Ian’s, turning out neatly-bound stacks of highly flammable product without regard for literary quality.
I searched the shelves of the bookshop in vain for anything by Sweet Petunia, but now I think about it, I didn’t check the gardening or self-help sections.
Please can we all be on the lookout so we know what we’re dealing with here. If characters from Ian’s brain are now real and writing books, there’s no telling where this will end.
Cher Lloyd vs ColdplayAwful CDs continue to land on my doormat with depressing regularity. Currently queued up for your Four Word Review enjoyment are “Voice of the Violin” by Joshua Bell, a collection of Motown covers produced by Pete Waterman, and the 1997 self-titled album by Kavana.
Lined up for this month’s review was “Sticks + Stones” by Cher Lloyd, a 2011 slice of Simon Cowell pop. But when I put the CD in and pressed play, something was wrong.
Can you see it? Yes, that’s right. The case says “Sticks + Stones” by Cher Lloyd, but the CD itself is actually another album from the same year, Coldplay’s “Mylo Xyloto”.
Obviously at that point I had to call a halt to the whole business. This is too much. Two albums I don’t want to hear in one.
Now I don’t know what to do. I might just have to listen to Kavana instead.
That might be the bleakest sentence I’ve ever written. If the best available course of action is listening to a whole album by Kavana, you know you’ve hit rock bottom.
Yes sir, we have no porno-no todayI feel like a bitter disappointment.
BITTER.
At the end of 2018 I was bragging about how we were going to jump on-board that sweet, sweet dusty bandwagon trail and start throwing about porn like it was going out of fashion. Since then despite a few notable graphic and rather explicit efforts it has mostly been a big nen for the last month or so.
I tried to look for some horrible images with which to draw the crowds in. I checked all over the internet and there’s nothing there. All the porn has run away. Unless it is hiding in the shadows I can only presume that there’s none left. Clearly the world was done with the sight of naked flesh on flesh on possibly animal on flesh.
All I can do is offer up this very small picture as compensation. All you filth hounds out there watching, I hope it is enough.
Sinister Portuguese SantaSinister Portuguese Santa is nearly four metres tall and has a penguin surgically attached to his arm. Sinister Portuguese Santa will sit you on his knee and ask you what you want.
What do you want?
Mysterious Hand ManOn March 13, 2014, something important happened. What that something was, though, is a mystery.
Here are the facts of the case.
At an unknown time on that day, a registered user logged in to The Beans and – using their privileged access to this sacred dominion – perpetrated an act of digital flytipping. An image was uploaded to the web server which was not included in any post and which, until today, occupied server space without performing any useful function. That image can now be revealed for the first time in four and a half years. Let’s hope its owner will one day face justice. (Ideally chunky justice, but let’s not be picky.)
Here it is. The Police are referring to it as “Mysterious Hand Man”. Please call Crimestoppers if you have any leads.
UmbrellagateI was very angry about it, I can tell you. I swore liberally and at considerable length.
Wait. Let me go back a bit.
So, last night I went to some birthday drinks for Robin, a friend of mine and a fine upstanding citizen. We met in a pub on the south bank in London. Rain was forecast all day, so I took my new umbrella. I love my new umbrella: it’s black and very stylish, and it’s got bright green trim so it looks very cool, and it’s got a push button on the handle that makes it open right out all on its own with a satisfying fwump noise. I kept it leaning against my seat all night.
Just before I left, I went to the toilet, leaving the rest of the party around the table. When I got back, and picked up my jacket, my umbrella was not there.
I asked other people if they’d seen it. I searched behind furniture and under chairs. I looked around at other tables. I asked behind the bar. Nobody could explain it. Nobody had seen it. It had gone. Clearly, some light-fingered Cockney wideboy had seen it leaning there, unobserved, and nabbed it, and was now strolling casually along the south bank with my umbrella in his filthy, criminal hands, probably whistling “Knees Up Mother Brown” as he did so.
At this point I was angry, as described earlier.
Anyway, on the train home, about 40 minutes later, Robin sent me a photo of some people at the party with my umbrella. They’d all been leaving as the pub was closing, and they’d found it leaning by the table – not the table I’d been sitting at, but another just next to it. I’d checked all the tables before I left – in fact I’d checked the whole bloody pub – and it hadn’t been there. Nobody had noticed its mysterious return. So presumably the Cockney wideboy’s misfiring conscience had got the better of him and he’d returned his ill-gotten rain apparatus.
My umbrella is now safely stored in Robin’s flat in Penge, and my anger has subsided.
I will now take questions from the floor. Thank you.