Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

Avatar Can we be serious, please?

I need you to all listen to me very carefully when I say this. I am deadly serious.

I need you to understand that there is a time for nonsense and there is also a time for being serious. I am the most serious I’ve ever been without crossing that line and turning into Serious Ian again (nobody wants that).

If we’re to start this new year fresh then you’re all going to have to give me enough time to eat my oranges.

I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want you running into my house with whatever gibberish you need to tell me; it can wait. I need to take some time to eat my oranges.

Whatever you need to tell me, put a pin it in and try me the next day. Whatever job needs doing, you’re going to have to give me some extra time to get it finished. I’ve got oranges to eat and I won’t let anyone get in my way.

There. I’ve said it. Don’t get upset because I’m telling everyone the same thing. My oranges come first.

Avatar Newsboost – New Year’s Chris

As the Chris DNA continues to run amok in all parts of the modern 21st century, it was left to experts to predict just how bad it would be at the end or the year and what monstrosities we would have to face during the festive season.

Big money was riding on a couple of obvious options: Chris spliced into a mecha Santa, Chris spliced into one or all of Santa’s reindeers, some kind of I don’t know Raymond Briggs snowman Chris hybrid with bells on, and the ultimate horror of horrors, Mariah Chris-tified Carey belting, ‘All I want for Chris-mas is shoes’.

It was egg on all of our collective faces though when people in the street started to look and point at a familiar landmark in London which seemed to be undergoing a transformation. Behold!

Big Ben was no more. Big Chris with his big man work ethic had muscled in and now the capital city was doomed.

Ding dong, merrily on high. It’s only a matter of time before he captures what he needs and moves onto much more serious buildings like MI5, Scotland Yard, the British Museum, that Subway in York that almost didn’t serve me because I was pretty drunk, and anything owned by Noel Edmonds.

2026 will have to start with a shriek and a scream. Happy New Year, everyone.

Avatar Nearly New Year’s Eve honour list

In typical fashion, there needed to one of these.

Ending a year comes with all kinds of lists. Best this, worst that, how much money did that lose etc. I am no different. I am the best and worst of me, and I personally lost a ton of money at the box office. Over seven hundred million at my last count. Atrocious.

There are so many people and THINGS to thank that there isn’t enough time in the day to get through them all. There’s barely enough time to write this between bottle feeds and nappy changes, so here’s a brief list of thanks to those that deserve it most:

  1. Vikki – though the majority of this list will be played for “laughs”, a heartfelt moment if you please. I couldn’t have gotten through this year without my better half. She’s the only person I know daft enough to get pregnant, then fly halfway round the world to Florida so she couldn’t go on any of the rides at Disney World. A true stalwart if ever I saw one.
  2. My shoulders – me, as a whole, does not deserve to be on this list. I was clumsy before and have only gotten worse in these last few months. The MVP though goes to my shoulders who have rocked a little orb to sleep on a daily basis, sometimes carrying him for up to an hour. The other limbs were helping but without the shoulders they would never have gotten this far. I will be forever grateful.
  3. Ice Cube – if you havent yet watched the sensational piss fire that is Amazon’s ‘War of the worlds’ then I recommend you put down this website and head straight to a device that can stream it. The most bizarre adaptation of HG Wells you’ve ever seen, it’s two hours of watching a man (ye man, Ice Cube) flounder at a computer screen in an un-ironic fashion AND a fully fledged advertisement for Amazon itself. You have to see it to believe something so purely wank can exist.
  4. Support bands – wandering the outer echelons of my mind whilst trying to rock a tiny orb to sleep, I drifted far off into the ‘I’ll do anything to stay awake right now’ category and came across support bands. The amount I must have seen back in my 20s and 30s must be lots (there are no concrete numbers here, people). Mostly unseen and unappreciated, not all of them went onto bigger and better things. Still, they’re usually there playing to 5 people like they’re on Wembley stadium and to that I salute you, support bands, and your continued enthusiasm.
  5. The Prep Machine – we started off with a kettle (about 30 mins), then we moved to portable formula feed kit (used incorrectly 12 mins, used correctly 2 to 3 mins) and lastly settled on a prep machine. Though I was skeptical at first, especially considering the price, it has reduced making a safe bottle of milk for the lad to around 90 seconds. It is one of the most useful pieces of kit you can have with a newborn orb. Convenience is a luxury and I am glad we have it instead of being screamed at constantly until the food is ready. Bless you.

All of those that didn’t make the list, don’t feel bad. Try harder next time. Do better, yeah?

Thank you one and all.

Avatar Gorilla the (money) spinner

Hey everyone, it’s time to sing a song. A lovely song with lovely lyrics where everyone can have a great time, like those classic songs of the 1940s about losing your watch down a sewer grate or looking for milk in all the wrong shops.

This is a song about purchasing a fake gorilla.

“I want you all to know, I want you see to see,

What this terrible absence is doing to me.

I need to find something special for my garden,

I need to find something brash, oh, beg your pardon.

I wandered round and round, ’til I finally found

Something deeply profound.”

“There it was, sitting, waiting for my presence,

There it was between foxes, hares and pheasants.

Animal jumble bumble, humble though I was,

I was thoroughly pleased until I saw the cost.”

Wait, wait, stop the song.

Thirteen hundred pounds? For a gigantic plastic gorilla? What kind of insanity is this? I can’t afford that. No wonder there’s a thin layer of dust all over its back; it’s because nobody wants to splurge that much on something so decidedly useless.

I’m sorry, everyone. I promised you a heartfelt song and what I delivered was gorilla vitriol. You’ll have to find your good cheer and mirth elsewhere.

Avatar Jazzy Christmas

When you think of Christmas what immediately comes to mind? Decorations? Presents? Singing carols on the doorstops of strangers for fun to bring back the festive cheer to everyone?

Yeah, me too.

What doesn’t come to mind is any of this.

When looking for a Christmas tree a few weeks ago, I found these monstrosities dotted around a garden centre.

Why are they all playing the saxophone? Why do they all look like they’ve been drugged at the office Christmas party? When did they all have time to learn how to play an instrument? Why would anyone pay £19.99 for a single saxophone-playing Christmas toy?

I don’t know, but what I do know is that if you’re looking to make your house a little more festive then this is not the way to do it. Once you start mixing jazz and Christmas then you’re staring down the barrel of a Kenny G album.

Avatar Poetry corner – Guzzle

Hey, all you hip cats and righteous moonbeams, it’s time for a little lyrical medicine courtesy of Poetry Corner.

If you’re looking to let off some steam then this is the place you for. Take a load off.

Here with a creamy piece of beatnik bebop is Trancient Prozac and his poem

Guzzle

I guzzle. I am the guzzler. You can’t stop me.

When I guzzle down my perilous maw,

You really don’t know, you can’t be sure

If it’s ever coming back because of how black

The back of my maw can be.

When I guzzle, you’ll think I need a muzzle,

It goes all over my mouth and hands.

I’m drinking too much like it’s going out of fashion,

A red burping cannon, taking all yo fresh rations,

Right down my maw of tranquility.

Gasp at the gastro intestinal puzzle

That forms the basis of my sweet guzzle.

You don’t need a degree in food expertise

To squeeze the kind of wheeze from these balconies,

But if you can embrace the nurturing bustle

Of a pint of gravy right down to the nuzzle,

I’m sure that with practice you too can hack this

And be one with the almighty guzzle.

Avatar The right way round?

I am at my best a pedant and at my worst a twat.

Have you ever been walking around a shop and something catches your eye for the wrong reason? With the Orb now here on planet Earth it means that any casual shopping either doesn’t exist or can only take place if the grandparents take him for the afternoon. I love my Orb but he’s not old enough to comprehend that sometimes boring chores need to happen. You get them out the way and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all over. Game over, man. It takes so much longer with a trailing Orb. You take up way more space with a buggy or a pram.

There we were, looking for a new Christmas tree in every garden centre and kind of shop that would sell them. Once it’s done you have a tree that’ll last for a decade (no more flopping around trying to decide what size constitutes as “too high”) and you can get on with your life. Trying to get there can be a long and treacherous hike though; be sure to pack for all weather types.

I can feel my eyes glazing over underneath the artificial lights. My lizard brain screams, “get the one with the thing and the other thing and get outta there,” and I want to agree with it but there are so many options to consider that I shrug it off and carry on browsing. You can’t make a split second decision when fake trees can reach upwards of hundreds of pounds. What if we make the wrong one?

I’m walking past the lighting section in a particular store and I see it. “Wait, what? Nah that can’t be right. That has to be wrong, right?”

Shouldn’t it be ‘rechargeable octopus table lamp’? Why is the Natural History Museum collaborating with Dunelm? Who would buy such a thing and why do I care so much?

Does it really matter? Hardly. With Orb life being the only life there’s very little else going on. If you want thrilling stories and sexy adventures then you’ve come to the wrong place. I have nay nonny no nay none to my name. What I do have are questions about grammar on the boxes of table lamps.

Welcome to middle age. Population: us.

Avatar The world according to Tad Kensington

I am so busy right about now.

You don’t know how busy I am. I am literally the busiest I’ve ever been. When you two both have jobs and kids then you’ll know how busy one person can be; super busy cubed.

Anyway, I decided to leave all of that behind and go for lunch with my good friend, Tad Kensington. I hadn’t seen him for a while and I required some advice about work. I need to have more of a presence in the office, I need to stand out in a good way for once rather than having all that attention for giving everyone insulting and disgusting nicknames. In my defence, I paid for all those name tags myself, and when HR told me they weren’t going to reimburse me, throwing that table through the window was clearly “justified” despite what the judge said.

Tad Kensington knows a lot about “presence” and making a name for yourself. Over a very brief one hour lunch he gave me enough tidbits to set me up for life. I made a promise that I wouldn’t divulge everything, not just anyone can be Tad Kensington after all, however I don’t think he’d mind me passing on a few pearls of wisdom to those less fortunate.

Let me enlighten you. Let me show you the way:

  1. Eat a banana whilst pissing at a urinal. It shows you have control and that you mean business.
  2. Always keep an inch of coffee in the bottom of your cup and throw it on your rival whenever you see them. Hot or cold, it’s still humiliating.
  3. Business cards are for wimps. Get your details printed on sharks and hand them out. Nobody will forget the guy with business sharks.
  4. If you can’t be the tallest man in the room then be the widest.
  5. Wear another pair of trousers underneath your regular trousers. Nobody will know except you, and that’s where the magic begins.
  6. End every sentence with an ellipsis so no-one can interrupt you.
  7. Set fire to a £5.00 note every day to remind yourself that burning money is stupid.
  8. Ensure you only eat meals with capital letters, and do so loudly.
  9. Ask maintenence to build a fake stud wall in your office so you can amaze people by punching your way through it at the end of the day. That’s a game changer.
  10. If you can’t hear what people are seeing then you’ll never taste it.

I’ve practically guaranteed myself a promotion at work and I can’t wait to hear how you’re all thriving in your respective workplaces based on this guidance.

Also, you’re welcome.