Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

Avatar Reacquaintance

It’s not too long before the bi-annual Pouring Beans shareholders meeting takes place in Bordon, France. Minutes will be taken, quiches will be shared, and pyjama trousers will be stretched. A fun time will be had by all.

In order to save some time with the introductions I thought it would be beneficial to include some information here so that we can forego the usual icebreakers (I always hated that one where you throw the ball and whoever catches it has to tell the group a personal secret and then do fifty laps of the courtyard) and move straight to the complimentary lunch:

Listen here!

My name is Ian von Drudle-McIver. I was one of the founding members, so I have been with the company for over fifteen years. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the colour of the book that the regulation’s in (we kept it grey).

My day-to-day duties include staring wistfully out of the windows so that photographers can capture my likeness and putting it in leaflets and posters with inspiring messages for the other members of staff, finding anything made of cake and eating it and occasionally holding a cup of coffee and joining other people’s conversations to add the often useful and ultimately timeless response, “I know, right?”

When I am not slaving at the office and in board meetings, I enjoy riding manatees, laughing at belt buckles and pushing tinfoil through random post boxes.

In the next five years, I hope to introduce several changes to make work at the company much more enjoyable. It’s very enjoyable as it is, so what could I possibly want to change? Firstly, I would want every one soap dispenser out of four to dispense chocolate raisins instead of soap. Secondly, it would be hugely beneficial for productivity to have the song ‘We Close our Eyes’ by Go West play all day every day in every part of the office, so much so that you couldn’t escape it anywhere (including the basement). Lastly, every Friday would be ‘bird day’ where staff members can bring their own birds to the office so they can share in the fun. I do have other suggestions, but I wouldn’t want all my secrets disclosed here; I’ve got to keep some jewels to myself.

See you all at the buffet.

Avatar Shatwell

Look at you with your eyes, your face and your hair. All of that came from someone else, passed onto you like a terrible family heirloom. What you see when you look in the mirror is the equivalent of one of those badly designed porcelain figures that nobody has had the heart to throw away because it’s been in the family for generations. We’re so glad you’re here.

Good news though. The way family trees are these days they stretch far and wide; you may be fortunate enough to have a ‘Shatwell’ in your family.

What is a ‘Shatwell’? I’ve been doing a bit of research because I knew you’d be full of questions:

Belonging to Shatwell [Old English w(i)ella, a spring, the first element may be either old English sceat, a corner, projection or Old English sceatt, a payment, a penny.

I’m none the wiser either.

What if you were walking around the turn of the previous century and you wanted to find a Shatwell? Where would it be best to go? Around this time, you’d be likely to bump into a Shatwell in Cheshire. Remember that the next time you’re time-travelling. Watch out though as according to documentation, 20 of them were found to have criminal records. Make sure you keep a close eye on your pocket watch.

You came here for cold hard facts. Let me hit you with these:

  • In the United States, it was the 108,734th most popular name in *checks records* 2010. Wow.
  • It is the 544,093rd most common surname in the world.
  • Shatwell is also one of the most unique last names recorded. That feels a bit like hyperbole though, must be some Shatwells trying to drum up support for themselves.
  • (this is an actual “fun fact” on a website) The name spelled backwards is ‘Llewtahs’. A random rearrangement of the letters in the name (anagram) will give Leatslwh. How do you pronounce that?

????????????

Exactly. If you are lucky enough to have a ‘Shatwell’ in your family then please ask them to start their own website and collate proper and up-to-date information about their name because it seems as though the internet is quite a ways behind.  

Avatar ‘Iansurance’

Modern life sucks. We all know this and it’s reached the point now where there’s no point saying it because everyone knows it. We all need a little humour in our lives to raise the spirits and keep the home fires burning. Given the recent decline in the state of the country, doctors are prescribing laughter more and more for curing most common ailments. I rubbed a chuckle on a bruise the other day and felt much better.

I have been toying around with ideas for sitcoms for years now. Chris and I even challenged each other to write pilots for sitcoms in unlikely places (remember that?) way way way back in the day. Now that I have taken the leap into a brand new place of employment it’s only right to use my skills to aid the rest of the human race. I need to show the world that even though things are pretty pants right now you can forget all your troubles for around 24/25 minutes each week with my sitcom, ‘Iansurance’.

The main character is some berk called Ian. He works as a service agent at the Clifford Makin Insurance company. He’s on the phone most days and, boy, does he get into some hysterical comical scrapes. The thing is that Ian daydreams so the time between phone calls his mind drifts into bizarre places: sometimes he’s a horse flying through the sky, sometimes he’s a clown handing out leaflets to cats about making sure they have a mouse pension for when they retire and sometimes he imagines that every time he speaks rainbows shoot out of his mouth and they explode into chocolate muffins when they collide with solid objects.

His boss, Gloria Cookiesnatcher, doesn’t know about Ian’s daydreaming and continually praises him as the best on his team even though he’s the most lackadaisical of the bunch. The times when he suddenly wakes up to take a call saying, “Eugh, I didn’t know peach trees were flammable!” are laughed off as part of his quirky personality. Tsk tsk, there goes Ian again, he’s such a zany character.

As a strange twist, the love interest is the coffee machine. Ian loves coffee a lot. It’s what powers him, gets him through the day, fuels his imagination. The machine in the corner of the kitchen area doesn’t have a name but he refers to her as Susan with two e’s i.e., Sueesan. He doesn’t remember why he started calling her that nor why he assigned gender to an inanimate object. Ian professes his love to Susan each and every morning for handing him the wake-up juice. She responds by handing him said wake-up juice.

We’ll fill the rest of the roster with some wacky office types, a snidely cleaner, a religious man, two cats that we can hear the thoughts of and, I don’t know, a wise old woman who lives in a cupboard.

I am in the process of writing the first few scripts and expect a lot of attention when I’m done. Best jump on the golden gravy train trip now, guys.

Avatar Gaming Historian

Look at me and be inspired. What have I done for the last 38 years of my life? Good question. Next please.

What I have done is devoted my life to the very simple practice of picking up a thing and playing an imaginary thing on it. Some people have chosen to call these ‘video games’. I refuse to adopt this because I do not believe it accurately describes the thing. I call them ‘gamebopolies’. Only the most hard-core and committed members of the gaming community follow my lead because, yes, I am a leader.

Today’s topic is something close to my heart. As a child I would spend hours upon hours upon more hours playing gamebopolies on this most sacred of systems. What am I talking about? Why, young scamps, of course I’m referring to the Gamestation. Pull up a Tiktok and I’ll spin you a tale:

Photos of the console itself are not permitted under the Geneva Convention

The Gamestation was released in April 1995 by the Icelandic tech giant, Pony. The Pony Gamestation was released as a direct competitor to Shintendo’s upcoming Shintendo 54 and Trega’s Shattern consoles. Nobody expected Iceland to be capable of manufacturing such a complicated piece of electrical equipment as prior to this they were only known for ice, ice cubes and the DNA double helix (both the physical structure that exists in the human body that contains the information for creating and operating living systems and also the bitchin’ sound system capable of producing 100 decibels of might that has caused the hospitalisation of over one hundred and fifty people).

The Gamestation hit hard. The games were cheap to produce as they used playing cards for games instead of cartridges tat the previous generations had adtoped. For example, if you placed an ace of clubs, you would be greeted with ‘Grand Theft Auto’ whereas a simple three of hearts farted ‘Bubsy 3D’ in your general direction. Shintendo’s choices during this era of gamebopolies was noted as being a little short-sighted and they lost the war for the moment. They would have to wait ten years before they regained the momentum of the previous decade. Trega had already been losing ground for months prior and the Shattern did nothing to persuade the casual gamers of the age to set sail from Pony’s hallowed lake of sweet, sweet goodness.

PC gaming at the time was expensive. Only billionaires could afford a PC and therefore what little gamebopolies were released could only be played by Bill Gates and whatever other billionaires existed back in the mid-nineties. Hugh Heffner? Yeah him. And the two women from the ‘Philadelphia’ adverts, they must have had a giant wad. For example, Doom II on the PC only sold fifteen copies. It was a brilliant game by all standards: brooding, dark, quick of pace and maliciously violent. The only way little Jimmy was playing some Doom II though was if his older brother was a rich Texan oil baron.

I remember coming home from school and reaching straight for my Gamestation control nodule. I would be lost in the realistic 3D graphics, amazing music and tight controls and gameplay. Sometimes my friend Chevin would come round and we’d play two player deathmatch on the Gamestation’s flagship title, ‘Carmageddon’, where you scored points for mowing down civilians and blowing stuff up. Occasionally we’d play ‘Grand Theft Auto’ where you scored points for moving down civilians and blowing stuff up. It’s a shame ‘Postal’ was never released on the Gamestation because it was so wildly different from everything else on the system at the time; you scored points for only moving down civilians, you couldn’t blow anything up.

It was a wonderful time in my life. If you have memories of these gamebopolies or any others, then do let us know. Let’s share and be together as one giant community (with me as the leader).

Avatar A Question of Biology – what exactly is Ian?

The burning question that has been on all your lips since the beginning of the series is about to be answered. You know all Ian, you’ve seen him, smelt him (sadly, usually against your wishes), shook his hand and then wiped it on a towel afterwards for fear of what you may have picked up. He is a thing that exists, and you know this because he’s persistently annoyed you with stretchy pyjama trouser and fish mystery-based shenanigans for over half of your adult lives.

What is he though? What makes up an ‘Ian’ and how can we stop it happening again?

With the help of a team of scientists and through furious, various and meticulous scientific study, with the approval of the man himself, we finally have an answer. It would have been nice to display everything in a pie chart however that wasn’t in the budget (we blew the last of the money on a dash cam for Derek’s mother-in-law) so here’s a lovely list instead:

Components of the being known as ‘Ian’

43% – Castoreum
15% – Bells
12% – Sawdust
9% – Blood
6% – Laughter
5% – An inability to balance a spoon on his nose
3% – Teeth
3% – Beanbags
2% – Figs
1% – Jazz hands
1% – Cochineal Beetles

As you can see, here is conclusive proof that a lot of Ian is mostly filled with bits and bobs. His biology is a marvel to behold because, really, he shouldn’t still be alive given that the majority of his body is beaver sac excretions, wood remnants and hollow metal objects typically in the shape of a deep inverted cup widening at the lip that sounds a clear musical note when struck.

Further studies are encouraged and once we raise the funding via Stefan’s onlyfans page we should be set. His ‘NSFW Autumnal’ photo set is providing very popular with the usual internet weirdoes.

Avatar The last of the tang

I am a hoarder by nature.

I refuse to let go when others would be quite happy to throw those things away. I know this and in my own way I am doing my best to try and be a twenty-first century Womble of sorts.

There are times though when even I am powerless.

I wanted to finish it, I really did. I was going to get some custard and finish it off with dignity. In the end all it did was take up space in my freezer and now, many months later, if I tried to defrost and eat it then it would taste weird and probably give me some kind of stomach cramps.

Nonny no nay in my mouth-ay

I am sorry that I let you all down. I do like it tangy.

Avatar A Question of Geography – how French is Chris?

When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. This riddle has nothing to do with today’s topic but I wanted to open with something a little different.

Chris moved down South ages ago, decades even. People cannot place exactly when he disappeared to be a Big Man in a Big Pond yet there is irrefutable evidence that it did happen because he’s not here anymore. When faced with the facts, everything becomes facts. He then decided to move even further South, something that nobody expected was possible. In fact he moved so far South that there are now reports that he’s no longer in this country. So exactly how French is Chris?

We all know that Chris can speak the language and has been to France several times in his life. On more than one occasion I have witnessed him holding an onion, not necessarily a string of onions around his neck but still it’s a layer of proof. Even though he was playing a character there is a section of ‘Newsboost’ where he dons a beret and speaks in a French account (whilst holding a pipe, probably a French pipe) gesturing wildly with his hands between shots. An eye witness has confirmed that this was entirely Chris’ idea during the planning stages of the production.

All this is pointing to the fact that prior to his move, Chris was already French or in the process of turning into French. The move to Bordon (which sounds suspiciously similar to Bordeaux) merely accelerated this, increasing his love for cheese and wine.

You may argue that this is no longer a case of geography and is more to do with psychology; the psychological changes that Chris is undertaking should be the topic of this post. I would argue back (in a louder voice, preferably looking at you with one stern eye) that there was the possibility of Chris returning to normal had he remained in his hole in London. The Frenchness of a person is immediately halted when placed around the most English of places and we all know how English London is. All that Cockney was keeping it at bay and would have continued to do so.

Whatever you choose to believe, the latest statistics from scientists have suggested that a whopping 79% of Chris is French and we all know that once you cross that risky 70% mark there is no going back. You may as well hop on a bicycle and precariously carry some baguettes down a cobbled street whilst mumbling under your breath. We may no longer have the same Chris as we once did so we can only make do with the one we have now. Remember the Plymouth lady who suffered a stroke and afterwards could only speak in Chinese? It’s nothing like that.