Category: Lumpy and/or mysterious

Avatar Lost and found

Found: one miscellaneous item (pictured)

This item and/or apparatus has recently been found on the Pouring Beans estate. We would like to return it to it’s rightful owner. If it is yours, please let us know in the comments, and include proof of your ownership by mentioning something that only the owner of this item would know, such as its serial number, commemorative inscription or a description of its bizarre smell.

If it’s not yours, but you can tell us what it is, we’d be equally interested. Thank you.

Avatar Bowl

I’ve never done anything very interesting while I’m asleep, beyond rolling around a bit, occasional light snoring and a bit of sweating. Until Monday night, that is, when I did the nearest thing I’ve ever done to sleepwalking.

I was having a very vivid dream, you see, that took place in the bedroom. Over on the other side of the bed, Some food had spilled onto the floor – I think it was a large amount of sausages, but very very thin sausages, almost like noodles. Anyway, there was a ton of it and if I didn’t get it off the floor soon I wouldn’t be able to eat it because it would be covered in carpet filth.

So I rushed out of the bedroom, in my dream, and headed to the kitchen so I could get something to hold all the slender sausages. The first drawer I opened had all the plates in it, and they were no use, so I closed that one and opened the next drawer where all the bowls were.

I picked up a big bowl and headed back to the bedroom in a hurry.

It was only when I was opening the bedroom door, bowl in hand, that I realised what I was doing, and that there were no sausages on the floor, because that had been a dream. It was 3am and I was now awake, carrying a bowl to the bedroom.

I did the only thing that seemed sensible, which was to put it down by the side of the bed and go back to sleep.

Avatar When soup explodes

Here’s something I didn’t know was possible until it happened.

Apparently, if you have a can of soup, and some part of the soup had gone off or was rotten when it was canned, it can ferment inside the can and expand. Eventually the pressure will cause the can to open.

When the can opens it will be spectacular, in a horrible sort of way, looking and smelling like someone has projectile-vomited across your kitchen cupboards. It will literally explode.

We emptied the cupboard and cleaned it three times to get rid of the smell, and then found the lid of the can several days later. It had blown off the right side of the can, bounced off the wall of the cupboard, and landed between some other items in the far left corner at the back.

Avatar Ode to the North

We’re all trapped indoors these days, since the prime minister lost everybody’s house keys and we all found that the front door wouldn’t open any more. I’m sure that’ll all be sorted out soon, of course, and I’ll be able to take the bins out, but for the time being I’m not getting around much and neither is anyone else.

While I’m being kept inside, like a neglected dog, I find myself missing the north. I usually go north regularly and now I can’t, and it’s only when I can’t go that I suddenly find how important it is to me to immerse myself, on a regular basis, in its rich culture and its even richer gravies.

So, as a consolation in these difficult times, I’ve created this moving ode to the north. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and that your cockles are warmed.

Thank you, or as they say in the north, ta.

Avatar Ian’s horoscope

It took him long enough, and I had to ask virtually every day, but Ian has now finally told me his star sign. So now, just in time for the new year, I can give him his horoscope for 2020.

Sagi-taurus

Outlook for 2020

Your love of cake motivates you to accomplish up to three things this year!

Motto: if you can reach it, you can make it sticky.

Love life

King, the god of love and pride, is your ruler and as he starts the year out in Aquarius, your mind opens to new ideas and new sexual positions. A new postman will visit your house between November and December, when your focus will be to make intimate connections to something larger than yourself, like a Volkswagen Passat or a Nisa-branded newsagent.

Venus enters your sign in early March for about three weeks. Pleasure and passion will combine to help you enjoy the finer things in life. The one retrograde period is from mid-May to end of June, during Venus’s trip through Gemini, causing you to ponder the benefits of online dating. While you have a high ratio of kissing within lips, it’s interesting to consider the alternatives.

Fortunes

Uranus, the planet of innuendo, will be ramping your sign all year, causing upheaval. Your outgoing, annoying personality is backed by your power planet, Jupiter. That means your good luck is directly tied to your arms this year, ensuring that you make your own luck by working hard and actively shaping your own future, perhaps by drawing it or even by acting out your desires as charades when you think nobody is looking.

You’re ready to work hard for the pleasures life has to offer – you will get particular joy this year from hot, salty chips, walking the wrong way on an escalator and free online pornography. You don’t have to apologize for that, unless you try to enjoy all three at the same time.

Your senses are awakened, and you will consider launching your own range of salad dressings.

Progress

Winning is your main objective and you can be a sore loser. The sun visits your sign in the spring, but hates you and doesn’t stay for long. Frustrated, you will destroy anything in your path, ramming your way toward achieving your goals. Anyone who stands in your way now will get decked.

The B&M Home Stores sale, from early October to mid-November, helps you reawaken your underlying fire and understand why you’ve been running out of basic toiletries so often. Embrace opportunities for spiritual healing now.

Avatar Seagull competition

Look at this thoughtful chap.

Seagull

He’s perched on a lamp post on Llandudno pier, gazing out to sea. Down below, fat tourists wander around with sticky donuts and runny ice cream, but from his vantage point, the sound of waddling morons dies away. He hears the wind whipping at his sleek feathers and the call of the other gulls circling above. He sees the sun glimmering from the rolling peaks of the slate grey Irish Sea. He is deep in existential contemplation.

The question is, what is he contemplating?

That important question is not just about probing the philosophical leanings of a Welsh sea bird. It’s also your route to a big, big prize, which may or may not be fish-based.

If you think you know the answer, and you’d like to be in with a chance of winning the Luxury Mystery Prize that might have been selected by a seagull, then leave your answer, answers or both in the comments below.

As the seagull himself would say: squawk!

Avatar Pie Shaver

Don’t you sometimes want to do something a little unorthodox? Don’t you want to live life on the edge? When someone points the finger at you, accusing you of being a boring old fart, don’t you want to hold something up and tell them that they’re wrong?

Don’t you sometimes want to shave a pie?

Behold!

Reuben and I did. It was a marvellous occasion for all, except the pie, which everyone forgot about and had to be thrown out.