An introduction to marking

Today I learned how to mark children’s schoolbooks. This is an important skill, so for your benefit, here are the basics I picked up.

Use a red pen. Marking is red. Green highlighters highlight some bits of red pen writing. You will be told which bits.
Tick everything.
If everything was right, put on a sticker that says “brilliant”.
If it was mostly right, put on a sticker that says “good”.
If the kid is clearly a bit dim use a sticker that says “target” and tells them to buck their ideas up.
If you’ve run out of “good” stickers, cut the word “brilliant” off a “brilliant” sticker with scissors and that will probably do.
Don’t mess up the piles. The piles were sorted by someone who knows more about it than you do and are not to be disturbed.

Good luck with your marking. Feel free to practice by marking this post in the comments below.

Swings and roundabouts

Be honest. When you see a playground full of children, you wish the children weren’t there so you could have a go on it, don’t you? Research has shown that adults appreciate playgrounds 63% more than children do and children should be banned from them because they’re too busy crying and pushing each other and generally not making the most of them.

Hangover cure

Nobody likes a hangover, but from time to time we all have one glass of port too many, and wake up the next morning feeling less than our usual splendour.

Thankfully, pioneering physician Dr. Kev has now demonstrated his hangover cure to the world. Mankind need never suffer again.

Gratuitous self-promotion

I wrote a thing for a blog site that gets even more people visiting and posting comments than The Beans, if you can believe such a thing.

You can read it by clicking on these words, or these words, or this letter Q, but not these words, or this asterisk: *

This post is not just blatantly self-promoting and aggrandizing, but also rather lazily adding to my Bean Count for this month on a day where I clearly couldn’t think of anything better to post.

Now go! Go and bask in my reflected glory! Go and revel in the euphoria and majesty that is me!

Beans 2015 Customer Satisfaction Survey: Results

Last month, Pouring Beans conducted a vast survey of all its regular users and contributors, with a lengthy survey form circulated to everyone involved in the site. Since then, our data analysis specialists, Wainscotting Wainscotting and Feeble Ltd., have been running the responses to the survey through a computer that occupies a large data centre just outside Neasden.

The response was immense – two people completed the form – and now I’m pleased to present to you the full results of that survey in a single, easy to read chart.

Thank you to everyone who took part. I think we can all take a great deal from these results. Hopefully it will help The Beans to improve even further in future.

When discussing these results on social media, which I’ve no doubt you will, please use the hashtag #pouringbeans2015customersatisfactionsurveyresults.

Grand Moments in Grand Designs, episode 43

Hello and welcome to another edition of Grand Moments in Grand Designs.

Today we look back on the never-to-be-forgotten moment when Kevin off of Grand Designs was going to stand on an arch that had been made out of tiles and plaster by some bloke who was building a house on Grand Designs.

Here we see them linking arms in preparation for stepping onto the arch, but this still image has a poignancy and emotion all its own, evoking as it does the tension and the energy of Greco-Roman wrestlers engaged in noble combat.

Go on Kevin, deck him!

Wait, no, this is a celebration of unorthodox and innovative architectural practices. That’s not appropriate.

Next time, we look at the incredible time when Kevin off of Grand Designs wore a particularly vibrant jumper and scarf combination on the day the double glazing was late.

Immortalised in stone

It’s with great joy that I can now announce the unveiling of a statue to commemorate my life’s work and achievements. It has been carved from stone and then coloured exquisitely by a team of master craftsmen from Madame Tussaud’s in order to create a lifelike rendering of my own handsome and stylish body.

Please feel free to use the comments thread below this post to discuss all the wonderful things I have done and the many reasons you admire me.

Beans 2015 Customer Satisfaction Survey

Here at The Beans, the happiness of our readers and contributors is paramount to us. In fact, if you came to our prestigious penthouse offices, you’d see that we have a chart on our wall of all the things that are important to us. “The Happiness Of Our Readers And Contributors” is in big letters at the top, number one. (“Kev” is at number 16, just below “coordinating our socks with our underpants”.)

To help make sure we’re doing all we can, please complete this short survey about your experience here at The Beans.