Author: Chris5156

Avatar Bowl

I’ve never done anything very interesting while I’m asleep, beyond rolling around a bit, occasional light snoring and a bit of sweating. Until Monday night, that is, when I did the nearest thing I’ve ever done to sleepwalking.

I was having a very vivid dream, you see, that took place in the bedroom. Over on the other side of the bed, Some food had spilled onto the floor – I think it was a large amount of sausages, but very very thin sausages, almost like noodles. Anyway, there was a ton of it and if I didn’t get it off the floor soon I wouldn’t be able to eat it because it would be covered in carpet filth.

So I rushed out of the bedroom, in my dream, and headed to the kitchen so I could get something to hold all the slender sausages. The first drawer I opened had all the plates in it, and they were no use, so I closed that one and opened the next drawer where all the bowls were.

I picked up a big bowl and headed back to the bedroom in a hurry.

It was only when I was opening the bedroom door, bowl in hand, that I realised what I was doing, and that there were no sausages on the floor, because that had been a dream. It was 3am and I was now awake, carrying a bowl to the bedroom.

I did the only thing that seemed sensible, which was to put it down by the side of the bed and go back to sleep.

Avatar Take a seat

It’s been a long day. Would you like a little sit down? Of course you would.

Lucky for you, while walking around at work, I’ve found a wide range of places to sit, offering delightful opportunities to rest in relaxing surroundings.

Where would you like to be seated?

  • The desk of inaction
  • The long yellow wait
  • The claustrophobic spinner
  • The high voltage armchair
  • The wasted opportunity
  • The cable supervisor
  • The oppressive cell
  • The desolate panorama

Avatar When soup explodes

Here’s something I didn’t know was possible until it happened.

Apparently, if you have a can of soup, and some part of the soup had gone off or was rotten when it was canned, it can ferment inside the can and expand. Eventually the pressure will cause the can to open.

When the can opens it will be spectacular, in a horrible sort of way, looking and smelling like someone has projectile-vomited across your kitchen cupboards. It will literally explode.

We emptied the cupboard and cleaned it three times to get rid of the smell, and then found the lid of the can several days later. It had blown off the right side of the can, bounced off the wall of the cupboard, and landed between some other items in the far left corner at the back.

Avatar Old news

It’s hard to know what to say, these days, when you talk to people, because nobody has any news. What do you talk about when nobody has anything to talk about? How do you fill a blog post when you haven’t done anything worth remembering?

Luckily for me, I am now quite old, so what I’ve decided to do is go back and see what past Chris was doing on this day years ago.

Read More: Old news »

Avatar Now, more than ever

These are strange times, I know, and presumably the creative people who come up with ideas for adverts are a bit stuck for inspiration. (Not that they were brilliant at it before.) That might be why they’ve all come up with the same four words to use in their adverts.

Now, more than ever, companies are telling us that now, more than ever, is the time to buy their stuff, whatever it is. Once you notice it you can’t ignore it any more. It’s everywhere.

Here are just some of the now-more-than-everers:

  • Tesco, who tell us that now, more than ever, every little helps.
  • Nespresso, because now, more than ever, their coffee machine pods are technically recyclable (but not in your council recycling).
  • Barclays, where now, more than ever, their “digital eagles” will show you how to use the Internet.
  • Every single charity with a fundraising campaign right now.
  • Country Walking Magazine, who are running very strange adverts to tell us that now, more than ever, is the time to buy a magazine about something that has literally been illegal for the last two months.

There is no solution to this ongoing crisis. The only coping mechanism I’ve found so far is to repeat the words “now, more than ever” back at the TV whenever one of these adverts comes on.

That doesn’t help, obviously. It’s just something to do. But maybe that’s enough – because now, more than ever, we need a way to cope with this unimaginative catchphrase.

Avatar 14 today

It’s 14 years ago today that the very first post was made on the Old Beans. That’s 14 solid years of stupid blog posts, half-baked comic strips and comment threads laden with impenetrable in-jokes. Hooray for us!

I will admit to being both surprised and vaguely horrified that we have clocked up a full decade and a half on this silly website. It seems a bit over the top to regard this as an achievement, especially since we have achieved literally nothing: 14 years in, we still have no audience beyond ourselves.

But I will allow a moment of pride and back-patting for the minor achievement that, 14 years in, we are posting far better and more interesting stuff than we did at the beginning. This is not a project that ran out of steam, it’s one that has developed and grown. Well done us.

I was hoping, at this point, to see how close we are to overtaking the Old Beans with the New Beans, because in my head the Old Beans ran for millions of years and the New Beans is some cheeky young upstart that’s barely old enough to be in long trousers. But that’s not true.

The Old Beans ran from 17 May 2006 to 23 January 2012, a total of 2,078 days.

We will ignore the comic strip era and step ahead to the New Beans, which began on 6 January 2014. As of today, it has been running for 2,324 days.

The New Beans actually overtook the (Duration? Longitude? Lengthiness? Vastness?) length of time the Old Beans had been running back on 15 September last year, a day on which we celebrated this milestone by making no new posts at all.

Anyway, the point is: the Beans has now been running for 14 years, making it one of the longest-running and greatest achievements of my, or anyone else’s, life. And for that we should be thankful. Let’s all raise a glass, or at least an eyebrow, on this momentous occasion.

Avatar Free to a good home

As you probably know, for the time being I am shacked up in a different flat a long way from home. There are many things about these temporary arrangements that are new and different, but probably the newest and differentest is the windowsill by the front door.

In this little block of flats, you see, there’s a windowsill next to the main door leading out to the car park, and the residents here seem to use it as a kind of informal swap shop. Unwanted items occasionally appear here, with no indication of their origin, and disappear a day or two later.

In the past week, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of items up for grabs, including a whole host of cook books, a coffee table book of photographs of chocolate, and one of those books that only really existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s that had a beige front cover and was specifically about microwaving things.

Here’s the current offer as I write this.

  • Four dishwasher tablets
  • Three potatoes in a basket
  • Three packs of lard, one of which is in a sandwich bag
  • A small Breville slow cooker
  • A CD compilation of traditional Christmas songs

The bad news, though, is that this week’s real bounty has already been taken. Here is what the windowsill held yesterday.

Yes, it’s hard to hear, I know, but the Ricky Martin album has already gone. I’ve missed my chance. Someone else in another flat is now Livin’ the Vida Loca, and I’m left slow-cooking my lard and potatoes in silence.