Airports

It’s 6.33 in the morning and I am in an airport. This seems to be a good time for me to tell you some things about airports that I don’t like.

I don’t like having to take my belt off when I go through security because the shorts I’m wearing for this flight are a bit loose and at risk of falling down while I walk through the scanner.

I don’t like exiting security and passing directly through a massive duty free shop before I can do anything else, assaulted from all sides by strong smells of perfume that my nose can’t deal with at this time of day.

I don’t like having to be here two hours before my flight, only to find that having cleared security they won’t even announce the gate number for another hour and a half.

I don’t like spending that hour and a half in a departure lounge that is basically a windowless shopping mall, all brightly lit stores and flashing screens. I don’t like that my entertainment options are a choice between looking around designer boutiques I’d never normally go in, or sitting in an uncomfortable chair in ranks of seats surrounded by screaming children and looking at the same designer boutiques because I’m literally surrounded by them.

I don’t like that all the food on offer is served by places that are chain restaurants that serve sushi or craft beers or sourdough pizza, and that here they also have to serve breakfast, and none of them know how to do that.

In summary, the basic point is that I don’t like this. But in another few hours I’ll be on holiday and too far away for you to hear me complaining, so it’s OK.

This post was sponsored by Heathrow Airport.

“Designed with the passenger in mind”

God Damn Lips

It’s here! The #mysteryweekend Newcastle 2019 Book is now online! Of course, you might know it by its proper title: The Time that Three Friends Went Away for a Spiffing Adventure. And Everything Was Fine.

You can read it, along with all the other silly books, on the Books page.

Highlights of this particular literary work include:

Words?
Ian blowing vape ships outside my nightclub
Kev’s Wemslip Bib
Filthbraham Bacon
Sugar Pillows
The Legend of Stabby McKenzie
A drawing of a raaeeeeeeuurgh

Steve Stevingtons is hittin’ the big

Last year, my flatmate Steve Stevingtons left his job.

“You’re crazy!”, I told him. “It’ll never work!”

Steve Stevingtons simply smiled to himself, an enigmatic look in his eye. My protests – delivered at full volume and more or less constantly whenever he was in earshot over the ensuing months – never seemed to sway him. “There’s no life out there!” I’d shout. “You’ll starve! You’ll waste away to nothing! You’ll end up on the streets!”

Steve would just shake his head, and go back to tending the little plants in his window box.

I was a fool, of course, but I didn’t know it back then. I should have guessed. Steve Stevingtons had a plan. Since that first day, and continuously soundtracked by my heckles and shouts from the other end of the flat, he’s crafted himself a business empire.

Now the whole world is chowing down on Steve’s Leaves. We’re all getting our fix of roughage and wholesome nutrients from Steve Stevingtons. His commercial dominance is starting to rival that of Big Frank. And believe me, I will never doubt him again.

Four Word Reviews: Voice of the Violin

Plan A for this month’s Four Word Review was Cher Lloyd, obviously. But there is no Cher Lloyd on the CD in that box. So, with some reluctance, I have had to change my plan. I couldn’t face Kavana. Not yet. So where else is there to turn? What might soothe my frayed nerves and calm me after this disconcerting change of plan? I turn back to the pile of dreadful CDs, once again growing at an alarming rate. I pass on Pete Waterman’s Motown collection. Ah yes, here we go. This guy. This guy will do nicely.

Cher Lloyd vs Coldplay

Awful CDs continue to land on my doormat with depressing regularity. Currently queued up for your Four Word Review enjoyment are “Voice of the Violin” by Joshua Bell, a collection of Motown covers produced by Pete Waterman, and the 1997 self-titled album by Kavana.

Lined up for this month’s review was “Sticks + Stones” by Cher Lloyd, a 2011 slice of Simon Cowell pop. But when I put the CD in and pressed play, something was wrong.

Can you see it? Yes, that’s right. The case says “Sticks + Stones” by Cher Lloyd, but the CD itself is actually another album from the same year, Coldplay’s “Mylo Xyloto”.

Obviously at that point I had to call a halt to the whole business. This is too much. Two albums I don’t want to hear in one.

Now I don’t know what to do. I might just have to listen to Kavana instead.

That might be the bleakest sentence I’ve ever written. If the best available course of action is listening to a whole album by Kavana, you know you’ve hit rock bottom.

Stickless

Well, we knew it would happen, but we didn’t think it would be this soon.

The Stick is gone.

We knew, of course, that The Stick had got itself a taste for adventure. We knew also that it had been deposited at the foot of the wrong kind of tree. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it has already started its next adventure. But we are, nonetheless, sad to see it go.

(By “we”, I mean anyone who agrees with me. You may wish to clarify your own position in the comments.)

It is my hope that The Stick has gone on to a new life playing fetch with an enthusiastic collie dog, or perhaps is now propping open a garage door somewhere. We can hope.

Tenniversary

It’s been ten years since one of the most important cultural events of our, or anyone else’s, lifetimes. The Papples’ debut album, Wasting my Life, was released in May 2009 to a largely indifferent public.

To celebrate this milestone, Ian and myself made a pilgrimage to a number of sites on the south coast where the photos for the album sleeve were taken. We then recreated as many as we could find to mark this seminal tenniversary event. Join us, now, as we take you through all of the photos we recreated, slowly, one by one, whether you want to see them or not, like a distant relative showing you some old holiday photos.

Pouring beans

If you Google “pouring beans”, we are number 3 in the listings. And rightly so. Bronze is a fitting medal considering the effort we put in here.

The top two results are both websites describing an activity called “pouring beans” which is a lesson used at Montessori day nurseries. Since we do very little bean pouring here, and the pouring of Montessori beans is clearly more popular than we are, I think it’s time we examined this practice. I also think that if we put the pouring beans activity on our Pouring Beans website we might get bumped up the listings.

Here is the full guide for you to try at home.

Age	2½ to 3 years
Materials	Two identical jugs, beans, tray, mat
Aim	To pour the beans from one jug to the other and then back
Learning outcomes	Concentration! Patience! Hand-eye co-ordination! Hand control! Eyes! Beans! Pouring the beans!
Instructions	You… I mean, you get the kid to pour beans from one jug to another. If you want to make it more complicated than that, there’s some more detailed instructions here, but I expect the kid will lose interest before you finish explaining it and go and run around for a bit instead.
Extending the activity	Use smaller grains. Use bigger grains. Use smaller jugs. Use bigger jugs. Do it without jugs. Do it without beans or jugs and just imagine it. Sit in silence and think about beans. Just sit in silence. Just be quiet. Why can’t you be quiet. Now go back to pouring beans.
Variations	Use different beans or rice or dice or something else.

I’ve spent the evening doing this and I can confirm three things.

It’s relaxing for the first two or three minutes.
After the first few minutes you start to get very bored, and then shortly after that you begin to lose your mind. After an hour I had named all the individual beans and was taking register while they tipped from one jug to the other.
The version of Pouring Beans that we’ve been doing, that is less directly bean-related and more about blogging, is far more enjoyable and deserves to be first in the Google search ranking.