Prepared

How will you defend yourself in an emergency? It’s all well and good saying you can do hand-to-hand combat, or that you know how to hot-wire a car to make a getaway, but when hordes of neer-do-wells are charging towards your location, can you make yourself safe?

Preparation is the most important thing. Preparation will be the difference between survival and defeat.

This week, I took the opportunity to practice building makeshift barricades and defensive structures.

Here you can see a defensive wall that has been built from packs of kitchen roll. It allows you to hide from potential attackers and will repel missile barrages (providing missiles are relatively light and not thrown very hard).

By preparing myself in this way, I know that I can defend myself from any lethal attack in which the attacker is armed only with paper aeroplanes as long as I have about 50 packs of kitchen roll immediately to hand and a few minutes with which to build a wall out of them.

I am prepared and I will survive. Will you?

Broken

In the last two weeks, the following things have broken.

My central heating boiler, which was broken for a week
My phone, which had to be sent off for a week and a half
My coffee pot, which still isn’t fixed
My watch, which still isn’t fixed
My iPod, which I had buy parts to fix myself

This has been dispiriting and distressing, and has severely tested my fortitude.

If you are thinking of breaking any of my possessions, or in any way modifying them so that they break in a seemingly accidental way, or if you become aware that one of my possessions may break or suffer a breakage-like incident, please inform me in writing at least two days beforehand so that I can prepare myself mentally and physically.

Thank you.

Things! Ep. 1 – Crumbulets

Pouring Beans Productions continues to be at the forefront of innovation in exciting televisual entertainment. This week, PBP is proud to launch its brand new series, Things!, which meets groundbreaking inventors and discovers how they’ll be changing our lives tomorrow.

In this first episode, Alan Rudge meets Clive, a man from Leeds who is revolutionising the world of food.

Knee windows

I’m definitely getting old. I mean, we all know this, it’s not news to any of us. But sometimes I still get surprised by my reaction to things.

The other day I was on a London Tubular Train. These are clever trains that have the corners sliced off so that they can run in the sewers. I was listening to a Radio 4 podcast (a sure sign of getting old – surely this should have been a stark reminder of my age) and minding my own business. The train stopped at a station and a young woman got on and sat opposite me.

It was at this moment that I realised that I am definitely getting on a bit.

Young Chris would have seen this young woman and thought well hello there. Young Chris would have been appreciative of her pretty face. Young Chris would have found his thoughts turning to the fact that she was wearing a grey tracksuit that dropped some hints about an attractive figure.

Young Chris isn’t here any more, though. No. Old Chris is at the wheel these days. Old Chris wants to know what on earth she thinks she’s doing out and about in January wearing a tracksuit with no coat to keep her warm. Old Chris starts his train of thought with the words bloody hell, isn’t she cold?

Old Chris has a Daily Mail style fit when the young woman sits down. He finds himself thinking well I never and considers folding his arms (but decides not to because he’s a bit arthritic, what with the cold and the damp lately). You see, lately, ripped knees have come back into fashion for those wearing jeans, and the rips have become ever sillier. It’s now fashionable to basically just have a huge hole where your knees can be seen. The young woman on the tube, though, was wearing a tracksuit. A tracksuit where the front of each trouser leg came in two parts, overlapping at the knee, with the result that when she sat down the fabric parted to show off her knees to the world.

She had knee windows.

Well, obviously I wrote a stern letter to the Telegraph at once, and blustered barely-intelligible words at anyone who would listen for the rest of the day about how ridiculous these young people’s clothes are. I mean, it’s just not on. I can’t stand idly by while people go around doing damn fool things like that.

Old Chris can’t be doing with knee windows. Old Chris doesn’t understand young people’s clothes any more. Old Chris isn’t fashionable.

Old Chris has decided to embrace old age. Old Chris is going to start wearing his flat cap more often.

Mosaic: Four Word Reviews

Kev and Sarah’s considered and insightful reviews of the Papples’ latest album has inspired me to do something similar with one of the presents Ian gave me for Christmas – that being the 1986 album “Mosaic” by Wang Chung.

I was particularly excited when I opened the cellophane to discover that this seems to be an original pressing which has been waiting patiently in its box since 1986, and the booklet inside is starting to show its 30 years a bit. The music inside is as fresh as ever, though. The title comes, of course, from the lyrics of the final track, in which Wang Chung tell us that the world is a mosaic upon a golden floor.

Wang Chung Mosaic

2016 State of the Beans Address

Delegates, please, take your seats. The buffet and free hot drinks will continue to be available during the open seminar at the end of today’s session. There’s no need to push. Settle down, please.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Professor Elbert Louche, and it is my pleasure to have been asked back to deliver this 2016 State of the Beans Address.

The New Beans has now been running for two years, a bold social experiment that has grasped the zeitgeist and undeniably transformed British culture. It has won several awards of its own making. In 2015, 96 posts were made by Beans members – an increase of 14 on the previous year – and 1,430 comments were made, almost double the number made in 2014. This is both impressive and delightful.

Let’s take a look at what each individual Beanist has accomplished.

Chris

This member made a total of 48 posts, precisely four a month, earning him 12 full beans and zero nasty dried peas. Chris continues to be the only member of the Beans pictured in a blue tie, something that he was hoping would catch on but so far hasn’t.

Ian

Historically Pouring Beans’ most reliable contributor, Ian has pus finger to keyboard on 35 occasions, timing those posts carefully to stay within the strict Bean Counter rules, and has also come away with an unbroken run of 12 tasty beans. His attempted catchphrase “sweet petunia!” has, again, failed to gain any traction in the last twelve months.

Kev

A look at the statistics shows that Kev made just 12 posts in 2015, but a more detailed examination of the facts revealed that from August 2015 onwards he has transformed himself from an idle, feckless individual, more interested in refurbishing his domestic environment than sharing the burden of running the UK’s most popular blog site, into someone who has earned the epithet “contributor” and is now a valued member of the team.

In conclusion, it is clear to everyone that Chris and Ian are joint winners this year, that the Beans is incredibly popular and brilliant, and the future holds many more awards for this website that will undoubtedly be bestowed upon it just as soon as we get round to inventing them. Well done.

Annual Christmas Roundup

Another Christmas has been and gone, so we’d better start wiping up the spillages and straightening the furniture.

Let’s see what Santa’s sack disgorged into my lap this year.

Comestibles

Little Italian biscuits with almonds in them
A selection of cheeses
Usual assortment of chocolates

Drinkables

Nice bottle of wine
Crate of 20 bottles of Budweiser (it’s so me)
Mug with a bear on it

Enjoyables

Theatre tickets
Room escape game tickets
Lego architecture set

Tea towels

Public Service Broadcasting tea towel
Mr Smith tea towel
David Bowie’s Big Boy Runaround tea towel

If anyone got more tea towels than me this year, I’d like to hear about it. But for me, the best Christmas present of all is my twelfth bean of 2015. It’s been a wall-to-wall bean-filled year for me on the Beans. Happy Christmas.

My Four Pounds

I bought a thing off eBay for a Christmas present. It cost me some money, plus £4 post and packaging. That’s reasonable enough. I paid the money and entered my work address for delivery so that it wouldn’t be sent back if I was out.

What I didn’t expect – what nobody expected – was that it turned up at work the next day. The next day. In the morning. No postman is that fast. No courier couries that quickly. No delivery man deliveries so rapidly.

It turns out that the seller’s girlfriend works in the same building as me, on the fourth floor. The day after I’d bought the thing, he put it in an envelope and gave it to her. She brought it in and, first thing in the morning, handed it to my colleague. The packaging cost him a fraction of £4 and the postage cost him the square root of nen.

So naturally, of course, my Christmas is ruined. The spirit of Christmas is charity and giving, and this shyster’s used his unfair advantage to wangle me out of £4 for a service that was not required. The spirit of Christmas is dead. My festive joy and cheer have been used up. I’ve torn my decorations down and burnt my Christmas cards. I dumped the tree out of the window onto the roof of a passing van. I put my fist through the TV screen when the John Lewis advert came on. If Santa shows up at my place I’ll give him a thick ear.

The moral of this story? Don’t buy things off eBay. It will indirectly cause your landlord to charge you for repainting the smoke-stained ceiling.