How to use a cash machine

Many of us Millennials (I think we’re Millennials, are we Millennials?) have trouble using old-fashioned things. We do everything digitally now. Personally I get all my sleep done using an app and I have a monthly subscription that delivers all my food through my Smart TV. So it can be a bit of a challenge for us Millennials (Jesus I think we actually might be Millennials) to get to grips with the analogue world.

Old people and market stall traders use “money” in place of digital bank transfers and contactless payments. If you need some “money” you can get it from a cash machine. They can be bewildering if you’re under the age of 60, but don’t worry, they’re quite easy to use once you know how.

Here’s the correct procedure.

Locate a cash machine. It will look like a sort of retro 80s video game machine embedded in the wall of a bank.
Familiarise yourself with the layout of the machine. Designs can vary but they will all have some common features: a screen with control buttons down each side; a numeric keypad; a heavily fortified metal letterbox; and a little slot with a flashing green light.
Insert your contactless bank card into the flashing slot. The machine is old and needs to actually make contact with it, but will give it back later.
Look at the screen. It will usually ask you to wait, because it’s old. Eventually you’ll be asked for your PIN number. Try to remember this. It’s what you had to use before you had a contactless bank card.
The screen will now ask you how much “money” you want and whether you want a receipt. Use the buttons next to the screen to appease its desire for information.
A beeping noise will announce the return of your contactless bank card. Retrieve it from the slot when it is slowly regurgitated.
The machine will now make whirring noises and, after an interval, the quantity of “money” you requested will be thrust out of the fortified letterbox.
You need to still be standing at the machine if you want to actually claim this money. If you have absent-mindedly walked away as soon as your card is extruded, you will not get the money.
If you stupidly walk away before the money appears, you will hear a loud beeping sound coming from the cash machine as you walk away, and you will spend a few seconds thinking it sounds like the sort of beeping sound a cash machine makes, and wondering why a cash machine might be making a noise like that.
You will only realise when the beeping noise stops that it’s the sound of a cash machine trying to tell you you’ve got it to dispense some of your hard earned cash, £30 to be precise, and then idiotically absconded before the cash dispensing happened, leaving thirty of your precious sheets wafting in the breeze in a crowded shopping street.
As the horror of your stupid, moronic actions finally dawn on you, you will turn around, just in time to see your thirty quid being removed from the machine by some middle aged woman whose face is a picture of nefarious glee, scarcely able to believe her luck that some brainless fool has just put three shiny tenners in her hand.
You begin to run back to the cash machine, but the crowd of shoppers slows you down, you can’t get through, and meanwhile the woman has melted into the crowd, anonymous in a black coat in a sea of black coats, a bit shorter than average, lost below the heads and hats, and – probably wary of the fact that whoever just used the cash machine can only be a few paces away – is more than likely now darting for cover to make a getaway. She could have gone down a narrow alley on the left, or into one of the shops.
By the time you get to the cash machine, she’s gone, and you’re £30 down, you absolute tool.
You absolute tool.

Mysterious Hand Man

On 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.

Four Word Reviews: Eyes of Innocence

Do you remember the 1980s? Do you like 1980s music? Are you keen to hear all the many sounds of 80s pop music on a single album? Yes, yes, yes and yes: the album for you is Eyes of Innocence, the 1984 debut from Miami Sound Machine, better known as Gloria Estefan plus her husband and some guys who would be quickly forgotten about as her solo career took off. Me? I like some 80s music, yes, but I generally don’t require all of it to be performed on a single album by a single band. And yet that is what I got when the postman pushed this through my door.

Four Word Reviews: Double Wide

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to just read these reviews, never having heard the music I’m reviewing. Sometimes I wonder if a casual reader would believe that I actually do listen to the whole album in its entirety before writing one. But I do, and that is why I have very mixed feelings when another CD-shaped package mysteriously arrives in my postbox. Sometimes the contents of that package are familiar to me and maybe even borderline palatable, like when Sade emerged from her Jiffy bag. Other times I find myself facing up to an album like Double Wide by Uncle Kracker.

What is a Mandolin?

A wise person once asked, “Where is my mind?” I often find myself coming back to this question as a reference point during the day because I know where my mind is physically, however there are times when certain acts of stupidity make me question whether it is really there at all.

You must remember to question everything. Nothing is for certain anymore. If you’d have told me fifteen years ago that I would have a tiny device in my pocket that could download cute videos of cats walking around like human beings at any time during the day I would have laughed right in your face. YOUR. FACE.

Do you know what a mandolin is? If you think it’s a stringed instrument in the lute family then you’d be so wrong I would have to stand on a precipice and tell the world. This is actually what a mandolin is:

It is a small, thin chocolate bar from across the sea, from a world where other chocolate bars clearly don’t exist. Quite what music shops have been selling all these years is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they have all been misspelling it all these years and those instruments of 6, 8 and 12 strings are, in fact, mendolins or mandolines, or possibly something else. If the decision were up to me, I believe a mandoloin would be an excellent name.

Faced with the possibility that all those times I have been getting mandolins all wrong, I have therefore proposed two outcomes to this predicament:

I will write, perform and record a song using the aforementioned chocolate mandolin;
I will eat one of these other “mandolins” you find in music stores.

It is the only way to find balance and harmony between these two vastly different things with the same name. If I am only half successful then the whole thing will be a total loss. If I can achieve both then the sun will come out and there will be a tomorrow to look forward to.

Wish me luck.

It’s your choice

Yes! It’s time for dessert. What do you want? Ice cream, of course.

But what kind? You’ve been a really good boy and you can have three scoops. Any flavour you like. What will you choose?

Not Very Good – Pets

Shhhhh! Be very quiet. No, I’m not hunting rabbits, but if you’re not careful then you may disturb this very rare animal I happened upon not so long ago:

Snuggled away in its carry case, away from prying eyes, the small collection of empty beer cans can be startled by even the tiniest of noises. You must approach with caution and with your hands behind your back as any attempt to circumvent these instructions will see them running away into the distance.

That is if this was a real thing. If the owner of this carry case is convinced that this is an animal of some kind then they are doing pets all wrong. A set of empty beer cans will not come when you call them. You cannot put them on a lead and walk them round the streets. There is nothing to boast about and no amount of grooming will turn them into a pet worthy of a competition winner.

You can pet them and you can instill a certain amount of love, however in order to get the best of them you must open up their heads and drink the insides. If you tried this with a goldfish or a hamster you would have the RSPCA breathing down your neck faster than you can say, ” official court summons” or possibly “Jimmy Tarbuck”.

This kind of relationship will only end in confusion, heartache and a trip to your corner shop to replenish your fridge with more “pets”. If I were you, and quite frankly I am relieved I am not, I would settle for a potato with a face drawn on it: strong, loyal and great with steak.

Next time… Animals!

Not Very Good – Food

Now then, let us all consider for a moment the best place to leave your chorizo.

Should you leave it in the fridge to preserve the flavours? Should you leave in the cupboard, in a cool, dry place? Or, and I know this seems a bit unorthodox for some people, how about outside your house, near the kerb?

As a human being, or the closest equivalent that likes stretchy trousers, I do enjoy my food. I want it tasty and I want it now. I also want it to be free from disease, infection and cat’s piss. I can imagine that the artisan who decided to leave the chorizo outside may not have realised this at the time. Yes, you may create a unique combination of flavours but if this is at the expense of the health of the people eating the food then you may want to reconsider.

We could look at this from another angle. Perhaps this isn’t edible chorizo. Perhaps this is a tiny chorizo car and the owner has parked it carefully on the side of the road. If that’s correct then the person is doing cars right and it has nothing to do with food.

I am of the opinion that it is food and it is wrong otherwise this article wouldn’t make any sense (?) I do not want your road meat. I do not want to indulge in your pretentious kerb-surfing, asphalt-touching tubes of protein. Please keep your bizarre attempts at food presentation in your houses where you can eat off the floor as much as you like.

I’m off for a burger.