Owl Kitchen. Or not?

When you’re walking around a shop there is a fair amount of pressure. You, as a consumer, need to spend your money otherwise the shop won’t be there anymore. So what will you buy? What wonders would you prefer to spend your hard-earned cash on?

For instance, would you like to buy this?

Now I am all for knick knacks and tat yet I am confused and perturbed as to what this owl wants. Clearly it wants to cook but it can’t spell ‘cook’ so it looks like it is asking for ‘cok’. So is this an owl with poor spelling and grammar? Was it the result of bad education?

Unless its eyes are the o’s but then there’d be three so the item’s message is ‘coook’ which is the kind of enthusiasm I can fully understand. But then why a spoon and a fork? Why is the owl trying to eat a fish when owls don’t eat fish?

I stared for a good five minutes at this the other day and I am still no further forward. Perhaps somebody else might be able to solve the mystery.

I like owls but this just seems wrong.

Sport

Sport! We all know what sport is, but until recently I had no interest in it.

“Pah!,” I would say, “away with your sport”. Sometimes I would tut and shake my head. Sport was a mystery to me, something that affected others deeply and yet passed me by.

Well, no more. I’ve been bitten by the sport bug. I am a sport man now.

Positive Moments

I know there’s been a lot of bad things happening recently. Just today I discovered that the patent on application number EP96923892.2 expired on 21 June. Very, very sad times.

It can’t be all doom and gloom though, right? There has to be some bright cheeks peeking out between the hazard clouds. It’s a good job that I am here to wheel out the happy high fives.

In addition to the thrilling news that my new book, ‘Thirst Pocket Hysteria; a Nation in Crisis’, which deals with the sudden outbreak of panic amongst the general public due to the baffling rise of the Vanish Tip Exchange and people bulk-buying kitchen roll at an alarming rate, available at all general and local book stores come this Friday, is out, I also have a story which will warm the very deepest and very murkiest corners of your hearts.

Those with a keen mind will remember that my very first post on the then new look Beans on 3rd February 2014 dealt with a mild irritation concerning a lollipop man who works near my office. If you can’t remember it then it is also here like a tasty mung bean salad. He clearly could not handle how great I was, and still am, and chose to deal with this by being quietly hostile, ignoring my attempts to break the ice. A period of two years elapsed with no further instances until a couple of months ago I crossed the road and in reaching the other side he finally spoke up with, “Good Morning.”

I was stunned. All this time and now he chose to speak up? A lessor man would scoff and walk on, but there was something in his approach which made me re-consider my choices. The conflict was over. The battle was done. I dusted off the dour days go by, held my head up and retorted with an equally chipper, “Good Morning!” Now it happens each time I cross the road at his crossing. He sometimes even smiles. We are the best of fake office grunt and lollipop man friends.

I am still a little confused as to why the council would pay a man to stand next to a pelican crossing and help people cross the road where an automated system has been put in place for that very reason… but hey, that is not my beef.

This has been Positive Moments for the Beans Network. If you would like to share your positive moments with us then please don’t.

And now back to Chris…

A narrow escape

I’ve been worrying about this for literally years.

Some time ago – I don’t know, let’s say in 2011 or 2012 – I was in my flat and I was multitasking. I thought myself pretty cool at the time. Task 1 was sharpening some kitchen knives by swiping the blades through my little knife sharpener thing. Task 2 was watching something on TV – chances are it was QI XL on Dave. I could literally do both those things at once. I was amazing.

To achieve this state of advanced productivity, I positioned myself in the kitchen of my flat, facing the TV, using the backrest of the sofa as my workbench.

Some time later – weeks, or months maybe – someone came over to my flat and asked me “what are these?” I followed their gesturing hand and found that the “these” in question were a number of incisions – knife wounds, no less – in several places on the top of the cushions at the back of my sofa.

Trouble is, it’s not my sofa, is it? No. It’s my landlord’s sofa.

I have been silently wondering how the seemingly inevitable conversation would go, and whether leaving it until I moved out, years later, would make things better or worse. Do I plead ignorance? Or do I admit everything and hope that honesty is the best policy?

Last week, fortune smiled upon me. The people moving into my flat after me will bring all their own furniture. They don’t want a sofa. Our new flat is unfurnished and we need a sofa. My landlord has a sofa that they no longer want.

And so I now find myself in legal possession of the cosmetically-damaged sofa, without having to explain its slightly damaged cushions to anyone, and having got away with my careless crime scot-free.

A narrow escape.

Four Word Reviews: Mr Lover Lover, The Best of Shaggy Part 1

Time for another review of an album nobody wanted but which I somehow found in my postbox anyway. This month, we’re giving “Mr Lover Lover: The Best of Shaggy…Part 1” a more in-depth listen than it was ever supposed to receive.

Slut-Dropping in the USA

I am the master of the slut drop.

This is not one of those X Factor “I can sing and I’m going to show the world just how good I am only to fail miserably as it turns out I’m not very good at singing in the slightest and I’ve just shown sixty million people how stupid I am” moments. This is one of those “I am so good” moments.

For those who are not in the know, a slut drop, as defined by the urban dictionary, is, “a move in “dirty dancing” involving standing with legs bending the knees, squatting until the buttocks almost reach the floor and standing back up with a body roll.” I have unwittingly been doing this most of my modern life and it wasn’t until recently that I learned that it was an actual thing with an actual name. It’s a little like Stop, Drop and Roll but with less roll.

Having conquered the world of fixing washing machines (erm…), it was only a matter of time before I moved on to the next thing. It had occurred to me that the list of things I am excellent at is so vast I wasn’t sure how I was going to narrow it down. Whatever I needed to do to work it out, it was certainly going to be an all-nighter. And just so you know, it’s very difficult being this accomplished because it opens you up to an awful lot of criticism and jealousy.

So, what does one do when one possesses talents such as these? Sit on them and hope to get famous anyway? Hide in a cupboard? No. I have to take this out on the road and head direct to the heart of the action. The World Slut Drop Championships are held in Kansas City, Missouri each year. Without a shadow of a doubt I am convinced that I can win it. So, with the financial help of the beans massive, I will be flying out in the next couple of weeks to face the creme de la creme of the slut-dropping community.

Can I beat Sophie ‘Um Chuka Chuka’ Candice? Will I be able to defeat the two times winner Bish Bush Cacklewonker? Will I have the strength to take on the Qwindle Twins?

With your money in my pocket, I’m sure I will.

Smidge-tastic Advert Break

After last year’s expedition to Finland, in order to drum up some of our European cousin’s interest in the Beans, I decided that a further visit should be arranged in order to follow up some of the key points of interest. Indeed, some might say it was quite reckless of me to fly out to somewhere I had never been before, without any financial contribution from the kitty, with barely enough coppers to rub together to warm a vole’s index finger with, and so on. To those some what I offer is a non-sensical response, scatted with expletives and a rude drawing done on the back of a napkin.

Anyway, the main point of this was to explain my most recent discovery.

It seems as though our exports are doing much better than we believed them to be. Even though they are quite clearly blatant knock-offs, Smidge Manly has been seen promoting and advertising a wide variety of different items and services. His face has been adorned plugs for veterinary clinics, hedgehog windmills, fussy hooting clocks and even plugs. His viso/volto can be seen cheering on cyclists at the Toot De La Monge in July, handing out beef jerky to tourists by the Fleecox Bantymudge and even yelling for encores at the most recent Scanty Fox Cubs tour dates.

This has been my favourite so far:

Not only are these posters on most of the abandoned buildings in Ivalo in Finland’s town centre but some people have taken to stealing the unblemished copies, framing them and proudly displaying them in their living rooms. An unmitigated honour you’ll no doubt agree. The company even hired a sound-a-like for rolling radio adverts, mostly in broken English, to be wielded about the general public’s ears for the best part of the working week.

If this carries on, who knows? The real Smidge Manly may even be asked to advertise actual real life living things. He could become a local celebrity and have his own midnight questions and answers show. He may even get his certified gold double LP ‘Double Bugger: A Selection of Manly’s Musical Mutterings’ covers album into the European charts.

The word on the street is ‘pumpernickel’.

New flat

If you’ve been tapping my phone calls or you have psychic powers, you’ll already be aware that Elena and I have now concluded our search for a new home, a process that scoured the whole of south-east England and involved evicting a large number of people whose homes we thought we liked but then – tragically for those involved – decided weren’t quite right.

The Beans must, naturally, get the exclusive scoop on our new lodgings, so this post is here to present all the key details. Unfortunately no photographs of the dwelling are available at this time, but I am able to present the floor plan, as drawn up by the estate agent.

Floorplan

The main things we were looking for were space, lots of natural light, easy access to a station, and sufficient bathroom facilities. On the last point we had already ruled out apartments with just one bathroom on the grounds that, if we both needed a wee at the same time, it might start an argument. We then wondered what would happen if we had a dinner party and everyone wanted a wee at the same time – clearly some sort of ugly fracas or kerfuffle would ensue.

We were, therefore, delighted to find a home that anticipated this requirement – and, thanks to extremely innovative placement of its toilet facilities, it also has the advantage that during a dinner party everyone could simultaneously micturate without leaving the room and therefore without needing to interrupt the flow of the conversation. And of course, when there’s only the two of us, we can more or less go to the toilet wherever we are without having to move.

We look forward to welcoming you to our new home once we’ve moved in. Please bring your own toilet roll.