Avatar Five Novembers ago

We bought our house from people who thought they’d be living there forever. They didn’t, because we sent them away so that we could have it all for ourselves. I regret nothing.

Anyway, last week we pulled all the wallpaper off the walls in what had been their baby room, and found a charming memento painted behind it that had presumably been intended to last for many years.

It lasted five years and we’ve painted over it. But here it is, a message from five Novembers ago, just to prove it once existed.

Avatar You can spell that word…

For years now the scholars behind the scenes at beans HQ have been trying to work out how to spell two of the English languages’ favourite spoken words but without success. We are talking of course about casj/cazsh/caj and the ever lovely (to quote Ian)  “jush… juxch… jgusssh”.

Well the time has come to make an announcement, this has been researched, checked and casually googled at least twice, and we can now confidently write down those two words correctly for the first time in history…..

Read More: You can spell that word… »

Avatar Searching for a Nightmare

“As he entered the room, the air grew stale and cool. It was abundant that the door had not been opened for a while and neither had any of the windows. Not that you could tell there were windows given how greasy and dirty they were. Thin streaks of light tried their best to illuminate the room only to greet indifference and a smell that could only be unwashed clothes and unwashed hair.

Towards the back of the room there was a doorway without a door leading to what looked like a small kitchen area. Small grunts could be heard, awash with fear and sadness. Part of him didn’t want to know what was going on in there.

He blinked. It was starting to take shape before his eyes. Along the left and right sides were a sofa and a bed respectively upon which figures covered in blankets, jumpers and hoodies, anything to obscure their features, sat huddled. They were visibly shaking; no amount of clothing could hide that. Hesitant but also inquisitive, he crimsonly approached the nearest character and pulled back the mauve hood that separated the two.

Eyes as big as spoons stared back. Bags of a similar size hung underneath. The skin was sagging and the features were difficult to look at even for the morbidly curious. Nonetheless, he was sure that he was in the right place.

“Lycos?” he asked, “Lycos is that you?”

There was no response. Either it didn’t understand or it wasn’t there, long gone into the stratosphere with the rest of the junkies and the winos.

The heavy-breather next to it was a malnourished AltaVista.

On the opposite side of the room Webcrawler was on his knees, licking a damp patch underneath the coffee table. Clearly a spill of something important to them. He could have smashed his head with a lamp and it wouldn’t have noticed.

Most of them were accounted for except the one he had been looking to find the most.

The grunting was still coming from the back kitchen.

He took a deep breath and peered around the corner. An old man faced away from him, his hands looking for something or someone. The pile of newspapers he sat on had nothing beside it. The kitchen stank of sex and shame.

“Did you want to ask me something?” the old man queried. “You can ask me anything. I want you to, I want you to ask me.”

He turned around and the drool was let loose from his mouth. It pounded the hard flooring.

“If you ask me I’ll make it worth your while. I guarantee.”

That was all he could stand and so, with the answers he had sought, he bounded from the bedsit and slammed the door behind him never to return.”

Avatar What a party

What’s the best party you’ve ever been to? Was it one of your own or possibly a friend’s? Was it laden with so many cakes that afterwards you had to invest in a new pair of teeth because you ate so much sugar and dissolved your original pair? Did you dance like a maniac when ‘We Close Our Eyes’ by Go West came on, accidentally span round into an elderly man and sent his pint flying across the room?

I can guarantee you that no matter how great a party it was, it cannot compete with whatever kind of party Dr Owl is throwing.

Woah, steady on there, boy!

Not that I could tell you exactly the kinds of shenanigans that go on. This particular book was on sale in a lovely bookstore called ‘Barter Books’ in Alnwick. It was so special that it was behind glass; no common chubby funsters could go flicking through the pages. If you wanted to know what Dr Owl was getting up to you needed to cough up a stonking £24.00 for the privilege. It wasn’t even a first edition or a special version with a foreword by some famous owl who loved the book, merely a simple reprint. I don’t have those kinds of Newcastle pounds to do blowing on secret insights. A man can dream though, a man can dream.

A sound investment if ever I saw one.

Avatar Orange / Lemon

Here’s a little story that will lift your spirits in these dark times.

At work I’ve been snacking on fruit to try and be healthier. Yes, I want nothing more than to tear into a bag of M & Ms every day, but we all know that that is wrong and is the start of the slippery slope to fat bastardom, something I am keen to avoid at all costs. The human body and its relationship with metabolism, which has been well documented, starts to get worse the older you get. Whereas previously I could eat somewhere close to a pound of mince in one sitting and be perfectly fine, if I tried that now I would spend the rest of the week locked in a toilet.

I bought a pack of oranges for the vitamin C. They’re always described as easy peelers but they’re a shit and a half to get into. Unless the definition of easy peelers is, “something that requires a sharp knife to get into” then you’re not getting into one without, well, a sharp knife that is unless you want your hands covered in juice and pith. The last one in the pack was weird looking, it was paler than the others and kind of resembled a lemon in a certain light. It also had strange green spots that looked like mould, but they were there when I first bought them.

The more I looked at the orange the less I wanted to eat it. I started asking people at work of they wanted it to which I was greeted with a resounding “no!” for some reason. A few days went by and still there was no desire to eat it. You know me, I’d eat a sewer grate if it was coated in jam. Was it the fact that it took several minutes to get into it that was putting me off? That oranges are a pretty weak fruit overall? Who knows but whatever it was it permeated in my mind and caused a few more days to slip past.

Eventually I stopped being silly and I ate it. By now people were sick of me asking if I wanted to have the orange. I left it on my boss’ desk when she was in a meeting and, when she returned, responded with, “WHAT’S THAT DOING THERE? I don’t want your bloody orange, Ian!” I, in turn, thought this was hilarious (#fittingin). On a quiet day when nobody was looking, I stripped it of its skin and chomped it in three bites. The unusual green spots weren’t mould, so I presume they were some sort of birthmark.

A joke is only worth doing if you’re willing to run it right into the ground. I took a photo before I ate the orange so I could eventually send this to everyone in my team.

They are gonna love me so god damn much.

Avatar Can’t Stop the River Force 5

Avenging bunged-up watercourses across the north east of England, the River Force 5 are on hand with their collection of sticks and poles to slowly move rocks and piles of leaves around, allowing the water to flow more directly and efficiently.

Now you too can revel in their escapades and benefit from their wisdom in this, their first non-fiction publication, Can’t Stop the River Force 5.

In this charming volume you will discover:

  • Kev’s Sleeping Bag Deluxe
  • The Grn
  • How to deal with a gay issue
  • The tale of Robert Flandersnoof
  • Plenty of tug and tumble

You can, as ever, read it on our magnificent Books page.

Avatar A well-named business

We’ve talked before about how companies should always be named after the person who owns them and the thing they do. We’ve also talked about companies with terrible names who break this simple rule.

A leaflet dropped through my letterbox this week – a grubby, crumpled leaflet, certainly, but one I immediately trust because it comes from a company with an excellent and clear name. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Ron’s Collectables.

Ron has it all: a professional leaflet that addresses you as “Sir of Madam”; a big list of tat that is seemingly in high demand at the moment; and a suggestion that if you’re not entirely satisfied that this is a legitimate operation then you should hand the leaflet in to The Local Police.

I was, naturally, extremely keen to do business with Ron, and have sold him my house for £150 cash.