Category: Quick post made to earn a bean

Avatar Nine million minutes ago

It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been slightly more than nine million minutes since the first time Kev travelled down to London to visit me in my poky Mortlake flat. (If you prefer more conventional time measurements, like some sort of idiot, that equates to 6465 days, or 17 years, eight months and 13 days.)

Obviously we used our time together extremely profitably. Among our many intellectual and sporting pursuits, we found time to spend quite a while – several hours, in fact, judging by the timestamps – taking pictures of ourselves with my iMac’s photobooth software.

Here are some highlights of a couple of very youthful idiots having a laugh nine million minutes ago.

Avatar Holiday picture

I am on holiday, but I still need to make one more post this month to earn a bean. The obvious thing to do is to post a massive gallery of holiday photos and be all smug about where I am and what I’m doing.

I respect you both too much to do that. Instead I will post one carefully chosen picture, which is a self-portrait I took using an underwater camera while I was wearing a snorkel mask. The rest of my smugness can be inferred from this if you wish to experience it.

Avatar Placeholder

Hi, welcome to Placeholder UK.

There’s a time and a place for ideas and innovation. That time is not 75 minutes before the end of the month and that place is definitely not on the sofa I’m sitting on.

Sometimes all you need is a little something something to get you through. Sometimes, however, you can’t even muster up that. It’s at moments like this you need Placeholder UK.

We’ve been filling in the blanks successfully for the last 20 years and we’ll continue to do so as long as people either can’t be bothered or aren’t ready to do so yet. It’s why we’re here, to buy you a little extra time to sort that exclusive award-winning website feature or perhaps a little picture of a funny duck.

To celebrate how well we’re doing, here’s a picture of a fist.

Avatar Seeds

Kate has been very much getting into gardening lately, and in particular, growing vegetables. Our back garden is on its way to becoming a vegetable garden. Last year we had home grown tomatoes, potatoes, rocket and carrots, and this year we’re being even more adventurous.

Since all this stuff is being grown from seeds, I am enjoying discovering that mundane vegetables have impossibly exciting names for their varieties.

Some tell you where it’s from, like our spring onions, which are White Lisbon, or the Brussels sprouts which are Evesham Special. Others tell you what the cultivator was hoping for, like Elegance salad leaves or Sparkler radishes or our yellow courgettes, which are called Gold Rush. I see what you did there.

We’ve got some flowers with descriptive names too; our sunflowers have been set up for greatness with the name Titan while the dahlias are Showpiece. We have high hopes for them both.

I don’t know what to expect from our aubergines now I know they are called Jewel Jet F1. But I am a big fan of the classical names. Our spinach is Apollo, and we have two varieties of parsnips, one called Palace and the other called Gladiator. I have checked the packet and Gladiator parsnips are a “vigorous hybrid” with “large, canker-resistant roots”. Just like real gladiators were.

Thrilled and exhilerated by all these names, I then turn to the packet of beetroot seeds, and see that they are Mixed. It had to end somewhere.

Avatar Teaser trailer

I’m in a ridiculous position. Normally, on the last day of the month, I’m scrabbling around for something to turn into a blog post so I can earn a bean before the clock runs out. Nightmare. What picture can I find on my phone? What mundane event can I expand into a witty anecdote? What horrifyingly self-important letter of complaint from my past can I share?

This month isn’t like that. This month, on the final day of November, I find myself with a different kind of anguish. This month I have a whole series of blog post ideas ready to go, but I can’t use them yet. 

I’ve got pictures from the Papples recording session for Pop Squared. Tons of them! And they’re great, and funny, and there are stories about them. But I’ve already posted one set of Papples photos this month and I haven’t uploaded these ones. 

Then, I’ve finally edited the behind the scenes footage we shot while we were making “Space for an Ace”. It’s great. I pulled a few clips from it a few years back but the rest has loads of fun stuff too. Trouble is it needs another tweak before I do a final export, and in any case it would need to go on YouTube and there’s no time for that tonight. 

I’ve also got Four Word Reviews brewing. The album “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba has been on my desk for the last two weeks, but every day I thought I’d have time to listen to it I ended up not having time, so I haven’t managed to fit it in yet.

This is all without mentioning my camera roll, which is of course brim full of potential posts. Probably. 

Anyway, the point is that this month I’m tossing off a last minute post not because I’m short of material, but because I’ve got loads of stuff lying around and yet I still don’t have anything ready to go. So instead please enjoy this teaser trailer for upcoming posts here on the Beans. You’ll love them. If I ever get round to them.