Author: Chris5156

Avatar Three Men in a Tin Shed

After a suitable gap, long enough for us all to forget most of what’s in it, I’m delighted to announce the online publication of Three Men in a Tin Shed, the commemorative book of Bridlington 2021.

If you care to flick through its lemon cake tinged pages, you’ll find:

  • Ian’s Love Pipe
  • Kev’s fizzy pizza
  • Chris showering in jeans
  • Ludwig von Slugwig
  • Ian “taking the weight”
  • Chris’s cockney French
  • Kev stepping over Wom
  • The “ramming it home” flowchart

You can read it, and all our other literary masterpieces, in the Books section.

Avatar Shoe

Oxford Circus late at night
Crowds of wankers, lights shine bright
Down below the crowds that mill
Sits a sneaker calm and still

Who would drop you in this place?
Who has joined the unshod race?
Who would think their grand night out
Is better with one bare foot out?
I see you, shoe, and I see beyond
I see how great you’d be if donned
I see potential through the grime
I see the reason and the rhyme

Oxford Circus late at night
One lone trainer shining bright
The key to one foot’s endless roam
I envy the toes that take you home.

Avatar Sheriff Rockingham raises the stakes

I see that Ian is trying to start a new rap battle, maybe to make up for the fact that he lost the last one.

That’s fine. I’ll take him on any time, ready to fire my sick beats and dope rhymes his way. Like Kev, I’m gold on the floor and gold on the mic. But unlike Ian, I have nothing to prove.

In the couple of years that have passed since we last duelled, I haven’t felt the need to go showboating around with my rap skills. In fact Sheriff Rockingham has been putting his time into something far more wholesome.

I decided it’s time rappers did something more to help the environment. To stand up for the little creatures out there who are just hustling for a seed here, a seed there, trying to make it through the winter. That’s why I’ve been investing my rap riches in the bird table biz.

That’s right. It’s easy to assemble. You heard, the wood is from well managed forests. It’s even got a carry handle, fool. The grounds of Rockingham Palace are stuffed with these things and the birds love them. Time to get yourself in on the action before you get left behind.

Peace.

Avatar My new hobby

Last week I was having a nose around a shop full of old bits and pieces when this absolute gem of a book caught my eye. And it was only a fiver! I couldn’t believe nobody had snapped it up.

I’ve never been particularly fashionable, but believe me I am now. My new all-knitted wardrobe of highly fashionable black clothes with brightly coloured puffed up armbands and collars is turning heads wherever I go.

If you’d like me to knit you something beautiful to wear, just say the word and I’ll pick you a pattern out of the book.

Avatar Fixing Ian

When the New Beans started back in 2014, we all set up Gravatars of our cartoon heads in orange circles so that our comments would have our own special Beans graphics next to them. Kev would always be Kev, I would always be me and Ian would always be Ian. This was Very Important.

Then, last year, Ian changed his email address and picked a strange pencil drawing of a fat bloke to be his new Gravatar. Since that day, Kev has still been Kev and I’ve still been me, but Ian has been a pencil drawing of a fat bloke. This is obviously unacceptable.

Several months have now gone by, and Ian has failed to remedy this distressing situation, so I have taken matters into my own hands. I have rewritten the code that runs the site to specifically find and rewrite the avatar that appears next to comments he posts. Ian is now Ian again, by brute force. He no longer has a say in the matter. This is justice in action.

If you find any comments anywhere on the site that still show the wrong avatar, please let me know so I can make this ridiculous and oppressive intervention even more thorough.

Avatar Award ceremony

Back in Bridlington, we invested significant amounts of money on the 2p machines in the arcades on the seafront. Ian and myself only walked away with angst and a lesson about the dangers of gambling, but Kev was quite successful, winning a whole range of worthless items.

But Kev is kind and charitable, so he gave me one of his prizes – a bright blue figurine of what might be a turtle, but might not, with one of its arms missing. This, he said, was to be presented to Kate, and photos were to be taken of the ceremony in which she was given this prestigious gift.

Months have gone by since then, while I waited for the perfect moment. But now the time is right. Earlier today, I approached Kate as she enjoyed some relaxing downtime to break the good news and officially award her this prize.

Read More: Award ceremony »

Avatar Another lost classic

You know what I’m like. Always losing things, and then finding them 14 or more years later.

First it was Big Day Out. Then my long-lost footstool turned up on eBay. (Have I told you about the footstool? Remind me and I’ll take you through it all in exhausting detail later.) Now something else has arrived.

Back in 2002, Al had just got a camera and we excitedly made a series of five admittedly mediocre films with the title “AlCam”. The most ambitious, and possibly least terrible, was AlCam 4, where our theme was “culture” and we attempted to cover art, fine dining, foreign travel and music, among other things.

The finished movie was transferred to Super 8 tape on the camcorder, and then all the files were deleted because they took up lots of space and in 2002 disk space was expensive. Then Al, er, misplaced the tape. I had big plans to put all the AlCam movies on DVD, and in 2003 I did just that. In order to get the movie into a digital format, I gave Al my copy of the film, which was on VHS. Al then also lost that.

The result was that AlCam 1, 2, 3 and 5 have all safely been stored on DVD ever since. AlCam 4 was never seen again.

Until, that is, Al started going through old tapes when he had a clear-out over Christmas, and sent me this picture from the little screen on his old camcorder.

In it, we see a youthful Al and Chris introducing AlCam4, complete with branded t-shirts, in front of a very hi-tech bluescreen background. It’s been found. And when I get the time, I’m going to put it on DVD. Not because anyone wants to watch it – I don’t particularly want to watch it. But because it’s been an unfinished project for 20 years and finishing things is important. Especially to me. I’ve had an empty DVD box on my shelf for two decades and I’m damned if I’m not going to take this opportunity to finish the job.

To answer Kev’s next question in advance… no, Al still hasn’t found “An Evening with Kev and Chris”, now missing in action since 2003. Sorry.