Posh Outrage

You can imagine the scene, can’t you?

There I was, minding my own business, asking for a very simple birthday present when I was told, of all people, me, yes I know, that I wasn’t posh enough. The present in question was an afternoon with the very lovely Jeany Spark, an actress so lovely that I lost several pairs of eyes when watching her on my recent re-run of hilarious chortle-fest ‘Man Down’ because the loveliness overwhelmingly blinded me. I take eyes very seriously but I was willing to lose them for her.

So you can imagine my predicament, mainly because I have just explained the whole thing. I am not the kind of person who will take a glove slap in the face and walk away from it. With my trusty photographer in tow (that’ll be Master Reuben), I set out to show the world how posh I really am and when you see the results I expect you will know exactly what I mean.

Rather than clog the whole post up, I’ve used the modern facilities and supped the photos into an album which you should (should!) be able to view whenever you want.

New Job: Font Specialist

A little birdy, or a small nest of birdies, told me that a good way to make money was not to embrace pyramid and get rich quick schemes but to design things called fonts and sell them for big bucks.

What are fonts though you may ask? It’s a good job I looked it up so you don’t have to because otherwise we’d both be here all day.

‘Fonts’ are the things that people use to show words on computers so when you’re reading it doesn’t look like a book and smell like an old person. Your eyes need books on a screen (i.e. the world net web) in order to cope with the modern world. Fonts are futuristic and sexy, they’re everywhere too. Look around you: check that shampoo bottle, whip out that business card from the tramp you met on the Underground, peruse the label of those trousers that don’t fit well and make you sit like Buster Keaton. They’re all there staring back at you. In fact by reading this post you have some font looking through your eyes and deep into your soul. This font is… *checks* bouncy. I’m not sure what it’s called. Arthur maybe?

So who makes these fonts then? You can’t make them in a factory like biscuits. It would be handy if you could ask some eggheads to whip up a fresh batch in a laboratory yet that still isn’t right. The only way you can create them is with a pen and paper.

I have been working all five minutes and have come up with three excellent examples of new fonts that will be available to purchase shortly after the unveiling of this post for the rather princely sum of £50,000.00 each. Let’s see what will be up for grabs:

Old Man Jones – have you ever wanted to write like an old giffer? Does your handwriting look too neat and young? What you need is Old Man Jones. It turns your typing into a lower-case, simplified version that practically everybody can read.
Doctor Scrawl – I was once told that my writing looked like a long squiggly line with some dots above it. With this in mind, and the notoriety of illegible words on doctor’s prescriptions, it was easy to mash the two together to make everything you write one long line of, “Eh?”
Future Robot Blim – the future is coming and it wants your fonts. Blast off into the distant year 2022 with this highly effective and high-tech biro-stolen-from-the-branch-of-your-local-bank look with a dash of pomposity and a sprinkle of cyberpunk finesse.

Thank you tiny avian friends for dropping this idea into my brain tub and filling my bank with delicious money.

Calendar Conversion

Way back at the start of the year, when we all excitedly built our, now legendary, lego pouring beans calendars, we all deiscovered the small but important flaw that not all the pages actually fit inside.

At the time I shoved in all those that fit, and the rest went in the luxurious golden box it was delivered in. (Which incidentally, still smells of whatever magic they put into laser printers to make colours stick to paper).

Well at the start of the month, the time came when that initial tranche of pages ran out. Giddy, I opened the gold box and wanged in the rest of the year, only to discover it was too baggy and they all fell out every time I moved the thing.

Modifications were needed, and modifications were made…

The holey-bit was trimmed down by removing two layers of the thin bits, and thus a perfect fit was once again achieved.

Don’t worry though, this being Lego, all the spare bits are safely stored on the back.

They’re all ready to be re-fitted when next years calendar refill-block duly arrives from Chris at Christmas.

Curious Architecture

As the weather slightly improves in the British Isles, with varying degrees of success, so I am more inclined to leave the warm confines of the office and stretch my legs in the outside world. It’s a bit of a shocker at the moment. If people aren’t panic-buying soap and toilet paper they’re worriedly moving along the street, covering their mouths and greeting everyone with the level of suspicion they would normally reserve for an old man in a trenchcoat.

I remain a flurry of activity in myself and have no concern about these matters for the moment. All I care about is what I’m putting in my mouth (and also how it affects the shares of Greggs, what with the dip of people decreasing the amount of wares sold during the breakfast and lunch period, of course).

With my recent increase in eyes I can now see more than I ever have done before and you will not believe what I came across the other day. There is a house near to the office with the most unusual of… how to describe, well take a look yourself:

At first I walked past, had to stop, turn around and go back to see if I had actually seen what I had seen.

Are they the tops of baby bottles? Are they nipples? Are they sand castles The colour doesn’t even try to match the brickwork underneath. They stand out an absolute mile. What on earth was the designer going through to concoct such a bizarre structure?

The good news is that the property is on the market so if you’re looking for a beautiful four bedroom detached house with luxurious stone boobs to greet you as you come home every evening then this is the house for you!

Fraternity of Zingers

It was inevitable. You know how funny we are, right? How right on the fashions we are when it comes to news, pop culture and, indeed, fashion itself. It was only a matter of time before our amusing jokes about Kevin stretched into the cosmos and all and sundry (sundry, indeed) were swallowed up in the process. Take no prisoners because the Fraternity of Zingers is officially open.

I could stand in the corner, cracking off zingers like they were toffees, but it’s not going to change anything. I need a brotherhood who have got my back to help me spread the good word, the good humour and the good times involved with zingers. Who doesn’t love a good zinger? They’re fast, funny and fruity like the best kind of ~~sandwich.~~ woman. Bring me a big fat plate of fruity zingers so I can chow down like the rest. I want to take my fill of the choicest cuts and you can too.

There’s no paperwork involved. You don’t need to officially sign up like you would for a Direct Debit. All I need to know is if you’re in for the wild ride. All I need from you is confirmation that you want to be part of a family, the closest damn family you’ll ever have. When you crack off a zinger about the news I’ll be right beside you, cracking one back about haircuts or gardening.

A bell in the bush is worth two in the hand, after all.

Even if you’re not particularly hilarious you can still join, we want you! You will learn from the best and under our sweaty wings you will rise the ranks of the Zinger Elite.

Are you with me? Hyper Gamma Meta Zing Zing.

James Earl Jones is Amazing

Do you know who’s amazing? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not you or I. Nor I. No, neither of us is amazing. You can show me all your achievements, medals, awards and dissertations but you will never be as amazing as James Earl Jones.

This will be difficult for some of us to understand (i.e. Chris) due to the fact that some of us cannot watch films for fear of exploding. That said, James Earl Jones, or JEJ as he is known to his closest friends and family, has also has a stuperbulous career on both television and on stage, so you’ve got no excuses some people. He is a huge talent and has played everyone from a man covered in black plastic to a huge lion and even read all 27 books of the New Testament in ‘James Earl Jones Reads the Bible’. I know now what everyone is getting for Christmas…

I have a ton of respect for James because he’s always been there in lots of things, lots of things I have enjoyed which is a rarity these days. I almost fell off the sofa though when I paused a film he was in and this came up:

Immature, juvenile, yes yet also immensely satisfying and hugely enjoyable. I think James Earl Jones looks even cooler with walrus tusks. Walrus tusks or sticks of chalk coming out of his nose. He can pull off any look, he’s that good an actor.

Leggy Duck

Not so many years ago, Kevin Hill, Science Master, introduced the world to the Majestic Bird Goose – the biggest development in the world of ornithology since the self-boiling egg.

It is now time to introduce the next major leap forward in the world of birds. I am proud to present to you the Leggy Duck.

The Leggy, or “Upstairs”, Duck has all the key advantages of a duck (flotation, quacking, beak etc.) but now mounted atop a much taller length of leg. Just imagine what that means!

Greater distance between duck chassis and ground
Higher vantage point, resulting in better sense of perspective when surveying territory
Leg bendiness allows duck to adjust height when lower altitudes are needed, e.g. when strafing through hostile gunfire
Waddling speed of 12mph

The all-new Leggy Duck was also developed to incorporate some of the most popular features of the Majestic Bird Goose, and is capable of some of the most contemptuous pooping-and-strutting-away of any bird on earth. Thanks to the Leggy Duck’s remarkable legginess (or “leggitude” for readers in the US and Canada), users will find its pooping is particularly impressive, with a long drop and broad spread, and its strut devastatingly fast.

The new Leggy Duck: a revolution with feathers™. Order yours now.

Mrs Miggins thinks big

What’s that crafty (and also hugely desirable) old property tycoon up to now?

Last we heard of Mrs Miggins, some years ago, she was fitting out her properties with those chrome fittings and understated (yet ostentatious) gardens. But the other day I was in Farringdon when I stumbled across the fateful property where we first encountered her.

75 Farringdon Road: 25,000 Sq Ft of Exceptional Office Space

It looks like the house where I, or possibly Ian, it was never really made clear in the lyrics, first fell for Mrs Miggins, has been pulled down and is going to be replaced with some stylish offices instead.

My first thought, of course, was sadness: sadness that a place that meant so much to me, or possibly Ian, had been swept away in the blink of an eye to further expand the Miggins real estate empire.

But then I thought no, let’s embrace the change. I propose that we immediately put in a bid to rent some office space there for the official Pouring Beans offices. We’ve been working from home much too long; it’s time we established a base for ourselves. And there could be no more appropriate address than 75 Farringdon Road. I’m ready to chip in my fiver.