Category: Foreign

Avatar Interlude

Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached approximately the mid point of this website, so this is a suitable time to take a short break. Please feel free to take this opportunity to visit the bathroom or step out into the foyer to avail yourself of our wide range of beers, wines, spirits and snacks.

Part two of Pouring Beans will begin in a few minutes. In the meantime, please enjoy five minutes of gleeful silliness that everyone of sound mind ought to have in their lives.

Avatar Trekkin’ Abroad: Norman D.

So many posts in so few days. It’s almost like it’s the end of the month and people have one eye on the Bean Counter.

No matter. This isn’t just any post, this is important. Listen carefully.

I am posting to the Beans from a foreign location. I am, literally, Trekkin’ Abroad at this exact moment. I am within a country apparently called Norman D., though as yet I have been unable to ascertain its surname. However, armed only with this rudimentary information, I’ve narrowed down some likely suspects.

Norman Dodgin

An English footballer, who mainly played defensive positions, Norman Dodgin’s professional career lasted from the late 1940s to the early 1950s and he died in 2000.

Norman Douglas

An author, most famous for his 1915 book South Wind, Norman Douglas died in 1952 – interestingly, at a time when Norman Dodgin was at the height of his professional football career. A coincidence? Unlikely.

Norman Dyhrenfurth

Confusingly born in Breslau, a German city that no longer exists because it’s now called Wroclaw and in Poland, Norman Dyhrenfurth was a cinematographer who produced movies for National Geographic in the 1960s and is apparently also known for a film released in 2007, which is two years after his death. He was born on May 7th, the same as me. Another coincidence? Unlikely.

Clearly these are the three most eminent Norman D.’s in the world, and so logically if I am in a place called Norman D. then I must be in one of them. All three are dead, which brings the unsettling but inevitable conclusion that I have gone on holiday to a corpse. However, it seems to be a reasonably nice corpse, with a pleasant apartment that has a balcony and a short walk to shops and bars around an attractive harbour front setting, so if this is life inside a dead body it’s not all bad.

I am due to leave this place on Sunday and if any further information about the location or identity of Norman D. comes to light, I will share it here.

Avatar Kitty Chang

Last night I met this kitty.


(The photo shows the cat in motion because it didn’t stay still for long.)

I wanted to share this cat with you because it is the first time I have ever met a Chinese cat and what with one of our members being Chinese I thought they might know each other. 

This particular cat lived for the first six years of its life in Beijing, and its owners brought it to London when they moved here. About a year later they moved to a new flat where kitties are not allowed and the Chinese cat was rehomed with my friend Andy.

The cat has a Mandarin name that means “Little Black” and which is very hard to pronounce so these days it is generally addressed as “mate”.

Avatar Trekkin’ Abroad: More France

I went to France again, this time for two actual weeks. I made a number of important discoveries to supplement the important knowledge I gained on my last visit.

  1. France has almost no vegetables. Eating green things is considered suspicious and even ordering a “salad” in a restaurant will cause you to be served with a steak, a large portion of chips, a thick peppercorn sauce and a single leaf of curly lettuce. This is not a bad thing in itself, but I am concerned that the majority of the French population may be permanently constipated.
  2. My skin, especially the skin on the top of my head which has only really been able to see daylight for the last year or two, is liable to burn even when protected by a hat and a layer of factor 30 suncream thick enough to dip crisps in.
  3. I am suffering pastry withdrawal symptoms.
  4. French kitties who live in flowerbeds in the street do not want to be your friend.
  5. Forgetting to post to the Beans while away will cause you to lose one bean on the Bean Counter. The Bean Counter is unforgiving of holiday time.

I was hoping to gather more information over a two week period, but the French are a crafty people, and ensured I was plied with excellent beers, wines and artisanal ciders, so to be honest I don’t really remember much of it and the four points above are all I came away with.

Avatar Northwards

We all knew it would happen one day, and now it has. I am moving to the North.

Not the North of England, of course. No. Don’t be silly. The commute would be interminable. No, “the North” clearly means “North London”, as anyone safely cushioned within London’s self-obsessed bubble will tell you.

This important change will bring a number of new and exciting features to my life.

  1. I will be commuting to work on a London Tubular Train (described previously on the Beans here, in case you are not familiar with this novel mode of transport).
  2. I will be living in a district of London known as “Ruislip”, which is a complete mystery to me apart from being the setting of every single domestic sitcom of the 1970s. I will therefore be mostly wearing beige flares and a pudding bowl haircut upon moving, and will likely make borderline racist double entendres towards my neighbours to a soundtrack of slide whistles and canned laughter.
  3. I will be closer to the actual North of England than before and reaching me from the outside world will involve significantly less time hacking through the impenetrable jungle of London.
  4. I will no longer have a toilet in every room. (This will be inconvenient but I will have to get used to it.)

I await your warm congratulations on this momentous news, but am realistic about the fact that the state of the Beans lately means I’m basically talking to myself here.

Avatar Trekkin’ Abroad – Spain

“Da da de something something da,” as the song goes, “viva España!” Well, I am in Spaiñ now and it certainly seems to still be viving tolerably well.

This is a flying visit to a far-off land, so in many ways my assessment of the country and its people may be hasty or perhaps based on an incomplete assessment of the facts. But I see no reason why that should stop me passing judgement on the place.

So far, the main thing I have noticed are the number of English people here. English people appear to be not only visiting, but also living here and running almost all the businesses. I am growing concerned for the safety and welfare of the 46 million people who are native to Spain because as far as I can tell they are not here and I find myself wondering where they are.

Aside from that, the weather here seems nice and it is easier to procure bacon sandwiches, beefburgers and a decent curry than in the UK, so on the whole this place has its upsides. The downside appears to be that, if we leave the European Union, we will also leave behind most of the population of England.

Avatar Trekkin’ Abroad – Italy

I have arrived in Italy, land of many very ancient histories, of pasta, of scooters, and of Europe’s most cheerfully remembered fascist dictatorship.

My surroundings here are extremely pleasant but I have to admit to being a little bit disappointed by the food in what is supposed to be the home of one of the world’s most popular cuisines.

It turns out that all food here comes from a shop called Gonad. I have to say that I am not altogether comfortable eating anything that has come out of a Gonad.

If that makes me narrow minded then so be it. If that makes me seem closed to the wider world and the glorious differences between our nations and our cultures then that is fine. I am simply not happy here knowing that every sip of juice is Gonad juice and every mouthful of tender, juicy meat is Gonad meat.