Category: Trekkin’ Abroad

Avatar The return of…

As the ravages of time affect us all, I stare into the mirror and I am greeted by a face that looks both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. There are traces of the young boy who once flapped around gurgling nonsense about loins and chagrins mixed with those unavoidable lines and bags around and under the eyes. It’s always the eyes that give it away.

I am awash with melancholy. Has it been twenty years since Reuben was born? Almost twenty years since I moved to Newcastle? Coming up to twenty-three years since finishing sixth form? Where has the time gone?

I look back through the photos in my phone to make sense of the madness, to try and find a firm grip on the rockface of life. I must shackle myself to something tangible because I will go out of my mind if I do not. My most recent photos are of the Florida holiday: cheery blue skies, sunshine lollipop backpacks and rainbow cookie wonderlands. All of it warms my soul to see it once more like an old friend visiting. Then I see him:

SERIOUS IAN?!

He’s crept into one of the photos. He is pushing boundaries this time because, sat in a tiny car going around the Toy Story ride at Disney, shooting at aliens with lasers for points with his technicolour space gun, there he is. The irony is delicious. When did he turn up? I didn’t see him flipping through t-shirts trying to find one with Launchpad McQuack on. I didn’t witness him stuffing burgers into his grill and then finishing up with a strawberry milkshake, pretending that in a way it would count as a “balanced meal”. He must have snuck into my suitcase when I wasn’t looking.

About halfway through the holiday I caught what felt like a bad cold and needed to rest more. Was it me that woke up every time or have I been myself less and less? Could it be:

  • Maybe he tiptoed out to watch the Superbowl at some aggressive masculine sports bar and put a huge wager on one of the teams to win, watching the TV with a pint and a grimace as he realises he’d backed the wrong side
  • Maybe he walked around the vacant tourist trap landscape, shaking his head about the silly offers in the windows of souvenir shops, muttering to himself, “this country used to mean something.”
  • Maybe he complained to the hotel because the swimming pool didn’t open early enough and that it should be available shortly after the time he usually awoke at 5.45am
  • Maybe he told the family in front that they needed to calm down and that it wasn’t the “real” Mickey Mouse that they were waiting to greet.

I mean I’m not Fight Club so that probably didn’t happen but if he can creep out when I’m living it up abroad then it means he can appear anywhere. Literally anywhere? Literally anywhere. You’d best watch out.

Avatar Ian’s holiday snaps – #3

Do you feel like a mystery today? I think you’re looking for a mystery and I’ve got exactly what you need.

As I wandered the barren desolate wasteland of Florida, in the hopes of finding something worthy of my time (tad over dramatic, I know) I kept noticing these signs dotted around the place. I saw some on a highway as we drove to a mall one morning and there were also some lurking around the massive McDonalds.

Who keeps leaving these signs? What kind of website are they proposing? Why are there no details or pictures? Who would be insane enough to give money to a random stranger advertising on the corner of a McDonalds?

I kept imagining some sort of lummox on the other end of the phone and he would spin a wheel for every customer. Whatever the wheel would land on, that’s the website you got. You didn’t have a say in the matter and if you tried to he would send the “website boys” round for a little “chat”.

I’ll never get answers to my questions and, settling into my chair at home, thousands of miles away from website man / woman and their shady empire, I’m quite content to leave it that way.

Avatar Ian’s holiday snaps – #2

And so it continues.

In Florida there are a lot of gift shops. A LOT. They want all of your disposable income and they will do whatever it takes to get you in their store. A lot of them advertise ridiculous statements such as “gifts as low as $1.99” or “five t-shirts for $9.99” and it’s all lies. You’ll go in to be greeted by five kids t-shirts for $9.99 or the kinds of cheap mugs that not even an auntie with bad eyesight would pick up and consider. All lies.

Initially I ignored these places because I knew what would be inside. Later on I relented for a laugh and, you know what? I was right. Laden with plastics of all shapes and sizes, pirated Disney goods, the kind of nonsense every gift shop has. It was a treasure trove of bobbins.

What made me sit up and notice though were the buildings themselves. Nothing in Florida looks new, in fact everything has this worn out faded murky visage which you get used to after a while.

This shop made me laugh because you notice it straight away and every time I walked past I would think, “mwear!” to myself. The best mwear in all of town. Ladies love top of the line mwear; purchase one today for your gal, fellas!

I also keep saying it in a Matt Berry voice for maximum effect.

Avatar Ian’s holiday snaps – #1

The best part of being on holiday is taking photos of things that people have zero interest in and then forcing them to look at them once you get home. It’s a legitimate way of being annoying because they instinctively want to know about your time away and you can show them through 10,000 photos of a camel.

Not that I’m on holiday with a camel. Far from it, me ‘n’ the V have been sunning it in Florida for almost two weeks. We’ve done a lot of walking, I’ve drank dozens of watered down sodas and eaten my way through many burgers, tasty barbecue ribs and steaks.

I thought it best to ease you into the holiday snaps with a couple of posts, tossed off in my quieter moments, showing all the excitement of Orlando.

First up is this one. This is a fantastic photo of me emerging from the 7/11 with my Frosty blue ice thing. It was a hot day and I needed some cool refreshment. To my delight, this only cost a dollar for some reason (it was advertised as costing more) so I had to capitalise on the moment. I was on my way to pick up lunch from Subway, a blinding buy one footlong and get another free offer which we used several times. That was a good day.

Avatar Tea ‘n’ Tabasco

At last! Raise a bowl of coffee in celebration: “A Folk History of Dublin”, the official ceremonial record of our historic visit to Ireland, is now online.

It’s one of our biggest-ever efforts, running to an impressive 82 pages of words, drawings and stupid ideas, including…

  • Ian’s breakfast journey
  • Danny and Michael go to New York City
  • The red hot spiky baton of anger
  • Plinth people and façade folk
  • The now-legendary Kev’s Reality Flowchart
  • Mr Bread Adjacent Eggs
  • The angels smiling on Kev’s plan

The later pages of this document will be a particular surprise to Kev, who left the country before they were finished.

All of this collected wisdom and artistry is now yours to enjoy in the Books section of the Beans, along with our other sacred texts.

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 Business balloon update

After careful consideration, I have decided that perhaps my first effort of Chris wafting into Europe with his business ideas was not completely on point meaning that a revision was on the cards.

I have therefore gone back and drafted a whole new version to unleash upon those unsuspecting Europeans. Boy, they don’t know what’s about to be shoved up their viso / voltos.

I feel as though I have got the likeness that was lacking in Chris version 1.0 and with the inclusion of a monobrow and a more jovial facial expression I have addressed the criticisms of comments past.

What’s left then is to bask in the joys of my efforts before the balloon can set sail in the morning.

Avatar Get in my mouth

Have snacks, will travel.

Having recently been on an excursion to the Czech Republic, there were lots of opportunities to fill my face with various offerings. Almost on every corner was a vendor or some kind of business selling the local delicacy; the chimney cake (or ‘Kürt?skalács’ as Google reliably informs me). It’s a sweetened flaky pastry baked around these hot rods making a little cocoon of joy. You then get to choose what you stuff into the aforementioned cocoon and the most popular choices were cream and strawberries, ice cream and strawberries, strawberries, ice cream, cream, some kind of minty option and any other variation I haven’t mentioned yet. They were/are delicious.

I am here though to speak about another “taste sensation” that came across my way whilst lumbering around in shops. Tell me, have you ever heard of a Corny Big?

Only the cool people call them ‘Corny B’.

No, I hadn’t either up until recently. It is best described as a cereal bar with the minutest of nutritional value, acres of sugar, possibly a full bag per bar, and the kind of chemical taste that you would need three goes from a mouthwash to get rid of. They were/are “delicious”.

I filled up part of the suitcase with a small selection to take back. I didn’t even get all the different flavours too as there were more hiding in other establishments that we were dawdling about in when waiting for a reservation at a restaurant. What stopped me from getting more? I do have some self-restraint sometimes I’ll have you know (someone told me not to go overboard…).

I only hope that there is a relatively cost-effective way of getting them to the UK so I can indulge some more.