Category: Thoroughly Dull

Avatar Why not indeed?

Well, let me tell you. What you’re really asking there is three questions. Firstly, why don’t I use trains more? Secondly, why didn’t you ask me sooner? Thirdly, what kind of lunch is the best lunch?

I only wish that I could use the train more because it provided fast and easy travel when I was mooching about in my 20s and 30s, especially when Reuben and I had the benefit of the family railcard. I’m currently trying to buy train tickets to London for a gig in November and they’re still not available when usually they’re released some months in advance. This doesn’t feel like they’re taking my mini-break very seriously and I for one will be sure to ram it up their junction should I get the chance!

You should have asked me sooner. I am always considering going to Leeds and very rarely get the chance to do so. Oh, you know what it’s like. Things get in the way and before you know it, there’s weeds to be plucked, cobwebs to be dusted or shopping to be done. Last night I insisted on putting time aside to press my trousers yet after doing the washing up, cleaning the kitchen and going out for a three mile run, it was after 11pm and there’s no chance of me using anything where there’s a risk of scalding myself when the light isn’t great and I have work in the morning. It’s just not happening.

The best kind of lunch is a hot lunch, one that’s dispensed from a lunch hatch with lots of meat and potatoes. They come in all different kinds these days. When I were a lad, you only got three kinds of meat: turkey (at Christmas), chicken (usually from the freezer, have you ever sucked a chicken?) and ham (full of water and slimy like a frog). All of this lamb ostrich alligator kangaroo burger nonsense is miles away from what I would consider to be a decent meal. If you can’t get a video… wait, that’s wrong. If you can’t get a hot lunch, a sandwich is a perfectly acceptable alternative providing you also have a bag of crisps and a drink to go along with it, and something sweet for afterwards. It seems as though most meal “deals” these days (if you can call them that) aren’t deals because for more money they give you less food and I’m not happy about that.

You meant Leeds Castle, right?

(Ian practising at being a rambling old codger).

Avatar 23kHz

On the recent Beans outing to Dublin, I briefly mentioned the frequency profile of FM transmission and the reasons we have alarms connected to certain frequencies. Since this raised a small eyebrow of interest I thought it would be a good idea, from both an educational and bean-scoring viewpoint, to expand further on this subject.

Settle in, this one’s going to be wild.

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Avatar Loyalty update

Many, many years ago I wrote a post here on the Beans about my porridge loyalty card. I seem to remember it was not deemed as impressive as I had hoped and nobody else really seemed very invested in the level of loyalty I was showing to a simple breakfast food.

Anyway, a lot of time has passed since then, so I thought it would be a good time to look through my wallet and take stock of all the loyalty cards I now possess. By doing so we will learn something about where my allegiences lie in 2024.

I found seven loyalty cards. Here they all are.

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Avatar Twenty one years on

A year ago, when it was twenty years on from the founding of Zyurisizia, I wrote a post about the fledgling nation that Ian and I helped to birth, and we had a short conversation about what its flag looked like.

My contribution was only that I had “a feeling it involved triangles”. Ian dredged up slightly more detail, recalling “triangles and a red circle, a bit like the Chinese flag”, though in what way that resembled the flag of China, which has no triangles and no red circle, I don’t know. We then recalled that territory was claimed by fastening the flag to the longest pole we could find, and planting that in the ground in various places.

Luckily I have now found my Office Memorabilia CD, so after a year of impatient waiting, you’ll be pleased to know the answer is now with us.

The capital city, which was the Office, was claimed with a hand-drawn flag on a 30cm ruler.

We then moved on to claim the Wildlife Area a few days later, by which point we had a more professional flag on a metre ruler.

I haven’t visited the Scholars Gate housing development to check, but I assume the flag is still prominently flying there somewhere.

For your peace of mind, this is probably all the Zyurisizia nostalgia there is to be had, so next year you’re probably safe from a “twenty two years on” type post. Still, lots of fun was had by all concerned.

Avatar Quennell

Most days I drive to the station and go to work.

Like Ian, I use my eyes while driving, both to look at things, but also to observe them. Sometimes my looking and observing is simultaneous and sometimes both have to take it in turns.

There is one thing that sticks out when I drive to the station, and it’s this:

If it was called Clennel Hill I’d know exactly where I was. We all know that Clennel is a small village and a former civil parish in the parish of Alwinton, in Northumberland, England. We also all know that a clennel is a genteel way to refer to a kind of arse flannel. But it’s not called that, it has a name that’s far more obscure and meaningless. A quennell? Nobody knows what that is.

I’m posting this here in the hopes that, having declared that this is a meaningless word and that nobody knows what it is, I’ve created the right circumstances for Kev to put the word into Google and immediately tell me what it means.

Quennell.

Avatar Episode 16: Socks



I know, I know, I missed a month. It’s sort of worth the wait though, Chris gets sweary at the start of this one and wait ’til you hear next month’s episode… phew.

Anyway, this time we discuss:

  • Socks
  • Socks over Socks
  • Bed Socks
  • Socks
  • Clothes over clothes
  • Fleece.

Avatar Four Word Reviews: Doing it My Way

It’s been a long time since we last dipped our toes into the chilly water of Four Word Reviews – seven months, in fact. That’s largely because the mysterious supply of terrible CDs has been slowing down lately. Still, there’s one here now, and that is an album that’s ten years old this month: Doing it My Way by the 2006 X Factor runner-up Ray Quinn.

There’s not much to say about this album – as we will see – for the simple reason that it’s an album of swing cover versions. It contains exactly the songs you would expect and they’ve all been recorded and performed in exactly the same way as all the hundreds of other albums like this that have been churned out over the years. Everyone from Robbie Williams to Jason Manford has had a pop at it, and they all basically sound like this.

In this specific case, Ray Quinn was all of 19 years old when he came second (second!) in the X Factor, and he was whisked away to Los Angeles to record this album at Capitol Records Tower, in the very studio where Frank Sinatra belted out some of these songs in a more genuine way many years before. I read that on Wikipedia and it might be the single most depressing thing about the whole album. Wait, no, this is: it was a gold-selling album in 2007 and Ray Quinn became the first artist to score a number 1 album without ever releasing a single.

Track Title Word 1 Word 2 Word 3 Word 4
1 Ain’t That a Kick in the Head Literally no opinions here
2 Fly Me to the Moon Weirdly flutey and arhythmic
3 My Way Limper than Frank’s Way
4 That’s Life Violently offensive Hammond organ
5 Mack the Knife Robbie sang it better
6 Smile Tuned this one out
7 The Way You Look Tonight Urgh. Creepy crooning crescendo
8 Summer Wind Generic swing sung generically
9 What a Wonderful World Is this even “swing”?
10 Mr. Bojangles OK song made tedious
11 New York, New York No York No York

It’s quite hard to have an opinion about this album because it’s all songs you’ve heard a hundred times before sung in exactly the way you’ve heard them sung a hundred times before. It offers nothing new. You have to listen pretty hard to work out it’s this generic singing guy and not one of the thousands of other blokes with halfway decent voices who have chosen to tread this heavily congested road. It lacks any sincerity. A 19 year old can’t really sing “My Way” and hope to make you think they mean it, not that this particular 19 year old sounds much like he’s trying. Some of the more upbeat and jazzy numbers have been made quieter and less jazzy for some reason. It’s a big, brass-heavy sigh of a record.

In summary, my favourite thing about this album was that I could sometimes forget it was this X Factor guy singing it and let it wash over me like it was literally any other album of identical-sounding swing covers. My least favourite thing was “New York, New York” being turned into a sort of stodgy, plodding recital. Even I give that song more welly if I sing along to it.