Unfortunate

One of the places I sometimes go for lunch when I’m at work has recently started handing out fortune cookies. Sometimes when you go to pay they’ll just drop one into your bag.

When you eat them the cookie itself is unbelievably dry and tasteless, which is exactly how a fortune cookie should be. You’re not meant to enjoy eating them in any way. What you’re there for is the fortune. My first one said this.

“All’s well that ends well” is not a fortune. It does not tell me my fate. It’s a cliche and I was not given a cliche cookie.

Maybe I just got a dud. But then I picked up a couple more on subsequent visits, and they were just as bad.

As a result I have been left without any idea of my future. Three cookies in a row have failed to tell me anything of my fortunes and instead have just insulted me with a bunch of vague inspirational quotes and truisms.

This is why I am turning to the Beans Massive for help. I don’t know how supernatural you are, but if you have any way of telling the future, I’m all ears. Tell me my fate in the comments. Thanks.

How not to catch a train

Recently, thanks to a kerfuffle relating to a car being serviced under warranty at a garage that was nowhere near where we live, I needed to get back home from Maidenhead by public transport.

Getting to our house from anywhere by public transport is difficult, but even given our limited options, no effort has ever been made to link our home with Maidenhead. So getting home meant two buses and four trains and would take a minimum of two hours and 40 minutes, and even that journey time was only possible a few times a day.

The last couple of weeks have been both busy and stressful, so I will admit I was not in the optimum frame of mind for a difficult journey, and may have been distracted when a little concentration would help. But even given that excuse I managed to screw this up to a degree I would scarcely have believed possible.

This is the story of my #trainsaga.

Jolly good: 81 days

Those of you with long memories will recall the harrowing story I related back in July about clearing the browser cache on my phone and losing my winning streak on a stupid tetris game I play every day. I’d been trying to beat my personal best of 80 and bombed out at 79.

I had to start again at 1, and Wednesday 15 October was the day I would finally reach 80 if all went to plan.

Well, good news: today is Thursday 16 October, and I now have a new personal best.

I’m not going to pretend this is the biggest thing going on in my life at the moment, and it might not even be the biggest thing happening in yours. But it is a bit of good news and we could all do with that. Jolly good.

Work snacks

You know how this works. Someone in your team goes away somewhere nice on holiday, and they bring back some sweets or something for everyone else. Sometimes it’s just a nice bag of fruity chewy things they picked up at the airport, but there are people who take pleasure in bringing back something unusual that divides opinion.

In our team we have a side table where people sometimes put biscuits and other things to share. (We call it the calorie counter.) This week I came in to work after a few days off to discover it had several interesting things on it. But one of the oddities of working in a department where we all do shifts is that different people are in on different days, and by the time I arrived, there was nobody on shift who had any idea where this stuff had come from.

So I was left to examine it and see if I could work out what it all was. Here is what I found.

Podcast topics

Not so long ago, in one of our booze-fuelled Virtual Winston all nighters, Kev revealed that we are – finally, five years after we last recorded a new podcast episode – reaching the end of the backlog. It turns out that if you only publish one or two a year you can eke them out for a long time.

Anyway, this presents us with an issue. Sooner or later, if we want A Breath of Fresh Beans to continue smashing the podcast charts, we need to record some more, but that’s easier said than done. First, because we’re very much out of practice now, and we’re going to need to put in the hours if we want to attain the levels of highly polished badinage that our listeners expect. And second, because our podcast isn’t about anything at all, so we always struggled to find things to talk about.

What we need is a supply of good podcast topics. And, as the man who accidentally stumbled on the thing that led us to the name of the podcast, I have decided that I’m the one to supply it.

Herb roundup

For too long the world has been absolutely awash with herbs. Go into a supermarket and there’s half an aisle of little jars of greeny-brown flakes. Nobody has the room to store them all and if you try a new recipe it will inevitably require the purchase of some more which will then sit at the back of a cupboard for the next ten years.

Thankfully salvation is at hand. As part of their wider plans for a “decade of national renewal”, the government have asked me to lead a Herb Taskforce to rationalise the UK herb landscape.

A full report will be published later this year to coincide with the autumn statement, but I’m delighted to announce my preliminary findings here.

Basil – nice both fresh and dried. Versatile. Keep it.
Bay Leaf – floats in your food while cooking, then has to be removed because it’s inedible. Tastes of nothing. Banned.
Bouquet Garni – strange teabag of mystery leaves. Just use some other herbs. Banned.
Chervil – universally described as “delicate” which means it doesn’t do much. Just use parsley.
Chicory – very bitter. People put it in coffee which is weird. Use of chicory should be punishable by prison time to stamp this out.
Chives – these always repeat on me. Get rid of them.
Coriander – this is nice. Keep it.
Dill – banned.
Fenugreek – can’t even pronounce this let alone cook with it. Banned.
Herbes de Provence – just use some basil and oregano. Nobody will know the difference. If every region of every European country had its own herb mix we’d be knee deep in the damn things and no better off for it. Provence needs to get back in its box. Banned.
Italian Herb Mix – this is just basil and oregano. Use those. Banned.
Kaffir Lime Leaf – bay leaves for Asian cooking. Bin it.
Marjoram – this is a type of oregano. We don’t need to split hairs, there are more important things going on. Just use oregano instead. Banned.
Mint – yes. Keep.
Mixed Herbs – this kind of mystery herb mix is a waste of everyone’s time. Use basil and oregano. Any recipe requiring herbs can just use basil and oregano and it’ll be fine. Banned.
Oregano – yes. Keep.
Parsley – was hoping to ban this but it would leave restaurants without little sprigs of leaves to make food look nice, so keeping it on that basis.
Rosemary – I’ve got a good chicken souvlaki recipe that needs rosemary, and it’s nice on roast potatoes. Keep.
Sage – gets used in stuffing, I suppose, but will be keeping an eye on this.
Tarragon – no.
Thyme – no.

The above will become law by the end of this Parliament, so please begin throwing away all your other herbs now to avoid trouble when your cupboards are inspected by the police. Thank you for your attention to this important matter!

You and Your Northern Orb

So you’ve gone and got yourself an Orb. Congratulations!

There’s no looking back now that your family has grown by one and an Orb is in your midst. And what an Orb it is! Not just any old Orb, but a hardy Northern Orb, the type that is native to the lands north of the River Swale.

Now that your Orb is back home, swaddled in orblankets and making spherical gurgling noises, you are no doubt wondering what life has in store and what you should do next. Well, don’t worry: the Beans has your back. We’re here to help you through these magical, sleepless months of new Orbhood.

The first thing you will notice is that your Northern Orb is not wrapped in cellophane. You will be used to new things – especially ones that are genuinely new, unused and valuable – coming wrapped in cellophane, box-fresh from the factory. Perhaps on first picking up and holding your Orb you felt pangs of sadness, disappointment or even rage at the realisation that your Orb came with no packaging at all. But these feelings, and the lack of protective covering, are entirely normal. Try not to be disconcerted, and avoid trying to peel off any sort of outer film from your Orb, because it hasn’t got one. No. No, seriously. Stop it.

Your next question will be about what Orbs eat. Orbs in general eat all kinds of things, of course, but your Northern Orb has specific dietary needs that you will need to fulfil in order to give it a healthy, happy, globe-shaped life. Soft foods are best to begin with, so start with the filling of a Greggs cheese and bean melt. As your Orb grows, over the next week or two you can start introducing soft pastry – perhaps offer it a Greggs steak bake with the crispier corners cut off. Over time, your Orb will work its way on to Greggs tuna crunch baguettes and sausage rolls. Try to be led by your Orb’s tastes. They’ll tell you when they’re ready for more pastry.

You may also find that your Orb cries a lot. This is to do with their dawning realisation of the futility of existence and the relative brevity of our lifespans in the vastness of the universe. You can comfort them with nursery rhymes and lullabies. To soothe a Northern Orb, you might try singing “Fog on the Tyne” by Lindisfarne, “Big River” by Jimmy Nail or anything by Cheryl Cole.

Your journey with your Northern Orb is only just begininng and we’re excited to accompany you all the way, so we’ll be back with more amazing Orb tips soon. Until then just keep doing the things listed here over and over again and you’ll probably be fine. Good luck!

Four Word Reviews: Classic Bruce Willis

Here in the Four Word Reviews auditorium, we are used to closing our eyes and listening, carefully and attentively, to two kinds of music. One is the album made in earnest that is unwittingly terrible. The other is the novelty album of knowingly substandard tunes. And then, every now and then, we get something else. Something that isn’t a novelty record, but perhaps isn’t a serious artist making a serious and earnest expression of their art either. Today we’re here to listen to one of those albums. Today we’re listening to “Classic Bruce Willis” by Bruce Willis.

I don’t know what this is.

Pouring
Beans

Author: Chris5156