Mysterious lumps

I went for a walk yesterday and explored a park near me that I haven’t been to before. There’s a lot of places near me that I haven’t been to before, because I only recently moved to Royksopp.

It turns out the park contains normal park things (grass, trees, vandalised benches, bins mostly full of water from when it rained). It also contains four mysterious lumps. If I described them to you they’d sound like hills so I am including pictures here to make it clear that they are not hills, they are mysterious lumps, and there are four of them.

They are all different heights and they are perfectly circular, like weird pyramids. You can climb them all if you want to. Three are just grassy and you have to scramble up but one of them has a spiralling path to the top. It’s surprisingly tall – not that West London is particularly hilly, but it’s higher than all the other hills you can see and most of the buildings. You can see out to the countryside south of London, and to Canary Wharf, and to a little thing on the horizon called the Crystal Palace Transmitter which I have seen somewhere before.

The signs explain that, far from being lumps, they are actually mounds. I was very glad to have the mystery cleared up in this way.

Please use this thread to share stories of any intriguing lumps, mounds or protrudances you have witnessed lately.

Wooden Juice – a poem

I am afraid of wooden juice,
I don’t know how it works,
I know of liquid juices and
The taste, the thrill, the perks!
My mind cannot comprehend
How solid juice will fit
Down my neck and throat,
Won’t it get stuck in my armpit?

People say to chop it up,
“That’s the best way to do it!”
But others say that doesn’t do,
“You should just opt to neck it!”

As the days wear on I struggle
As to my final decision,
So I flip a coin in the end,
To avoid further mind collision.
It lands on ‘heads’, I’m doing it,
I’ll drink it down in one!
I tilt my head back slowly
Oh, the process has begun!

I woke up in the hospital,
The doctors say I’ll last.
There’s a jug next to my bedside,
This time I’ll drink it fast!

Report from Bournemouth

This week, my boss sent me to Bournemouth to attend two days of a big meeting where lots of people who all like yellow things came to spend time in each others’ company and talk about what they would do if people who like yellow things were in charge of everything.

I had never been to Bournemouth before, so I thought it would be useful if I presented my findings here for the enrichment of all Beans readers.

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.

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.
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.
I am suffering pastry withdrawal symptoms.
French kitties who live in flowerbeds in the street do not want to be your friend.
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.

Licenced

What do you do when life makes you weary? How do you lift your spirits from a state of malaise? Well, I don’t know what you do, but I get myself down to the Lego Store with my VIP card on double points day.

On Monday I bought this.

I haven’t actually built it yet because I’m, you know, preparing to move house and everything, but it’s sitting there in its box just waiting for me. The anticipation alone is enjoyable. Anyway, this particular set is only available from the five Lego Stores in London at the moment – nowhere else and not online – and if you took the trouble to go down there and get one, and you flash them your VIP card like I did, you get handsomely rewarded with extra qualifications. My new set came with this.

Yes, you saw right. I am now the proud holder of documentation that proves I am qualified to build and drive this bus. (The cards are individually numbered so I think I’m only the 209th person to get it as well.)

So in future, if you want to build some Lego, that’s fine, but you won’t be getting anywhere near this one unless you’re the holder of a driving licence like I am.

It Had To Happen

Self-fulfilling prophecies; funny, aren’t they? They are the “I told you so” for the individual. For me they do not happen very often but on occasion they creep up to bite me here, there and everywhere. Sometimes all you will do is play through a scenario in your head and think, “that COULD happen, but it WON’T happen.” Why won’t it happen? Because I am a smart, intelligent human being who is capable of great things.

Yes, great things but also deeply, deeply stupid things.

Let me set the scene for everyone; Friday morning, pretty early. I’m awake but not fully awake so I shower and get dressed for work as per usual. Our bathroom has the very helpful location of not being anywhere near natural sunlight so if you need to see things you have to turn the light on. I don’t like this, using any light during the day seems silly, so I do try to avoid using it as much as possible. I stumble into the bathroom to brush my teeth and carry out the rest of my daily routine: brushing hair, applying cologne and finally ending on some sweet, sweet roll-on action.

Yes, Kevin, it is still the 1990’s.

As I finish I put everything away and turn to leave only there is something amiss, something different that shouldn’t be happening. There is a warm sensation tingling under my armpits that wasn’t there before. “Hmmm,” I think, “that’s a bit unusual.” I leave the bathroom and enter the bedroom, the feeling is a bit more potent now, in fact it’s getting hotter and hotter. “What on earth…” and then it hits me. The thing that could happen but won’t happen. The instance that no self-respecting person would ever find themselves in.

When my ankle wasn’t so great I was using some deep heat to help ease the pain. I was lucky enough, rather than a tube, to get one which is similar to a roll-on where you can apply the deep heat quick and easy. This is located next to my usual roll-on; I had decided not to keep them separate, like a smart person, but ensure that they remain very close by.

In the darkness of the bathroom, without the help of someone with a brain, I had applied deep heat to my armpits. I toyed with the idea of just ignoring it however the sheer speed at which it worked forced me to return to the bathroom (lights on this time) and wash it off as much as I could. It took approximately three hours after this for the burning to reach an acceptable level.

Needless to say, this shining example of COULD/WON’T hopefully will inspire others to either avoid this remarkable pitfall or to come forth with their own stories of embarrassment.

Frankenstein’s sideboard

If you read the papers you’ll already know that Kevindo Menendez – now properly styled Lord Chang of Micklefield – recently sold his former home, a palatial residence that he had spent most of his life enlarging and expanding to a size copiously documented here in the past.

A property of that magnitude, crossing numerous county and parish borders and easily visible from space, naturally fetches a handsome price, and so the estate he has now purchased with the proceeds is one of the largest in the world. I understand it has its own representation at the UN and is a member of NATO.

I was recently offered the privilege of visiting this magnificent residence where I helped Chang himself assemble new furniture.

Ikea do not sell furniture even nearly big enough for this new house, and their normal wares would look like miniature dolls house furniture in its cavernous rooms. That’s why we took several flat-pack kits and re-engineered them to build this behemoth.

The people from Guinness have not yet visited – or rather, to be strictly accurate, they came as soon as we called but they are still travelling up the driveway and are due to arrive a week on Thursday. But we fully expect this unprecedented masterpiece of joinery will be officially confirmed as the largest sideboard in the Western Hemisphere when they finally see it.

A fine view

We all know how wonderful it is to lay one’s eyes on a beautiful prospect. It can be a true balm for the soul. (Those of us with five or more pairs of eyes presumably get even more from the experience.)

As an avid looker at lovely things of every description, you can imagine my excitement when I came across this sign, promising riches beyond imagining.

I was, of course, hoping for something truly breathtaking, like a city of dazzling bejewelled exotic domes and turrets glittering in the desert sun, or my own face hewn from solid rock in a rugged depiction occupying the whole side of a mountain. What I actually got, 450 metres later, was some countryside with some trees and that.

To say I was disappointed would barely hint at the extent to which this grand promise went unfulfilled. But I’m determined nobody else should suffer the same fate, so I am having the field boundaries adjusted across the whole of the parish so that, in future, others gazing upon the allegedly fine view see my face depicted therein, and they will know that they really have seen the finest view England has to offer.

You’re welcome.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Things that I did