Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

Avatar Phrase phase competition – Jan

Language is in a constant state of fluidity.

There, I started with something sensible for once. You know when you’re racking your brain and you realise you’re full of old expressions, catchphrases and adages that you’ve picked up along the way? Where do they all come from? How does someone uttering a sentence once suddenly become a phrase used hundreds of years later?

These days, it all comes from the Internet and lasts roughly about as long as the little orb’s attention span on a bad day. What is hilarious and prevalent one day is cringe and desperate the next. We need a more solid approach to this. Our lives are filled with throwaway matter so let’s bandage up 2026 by trying to create a brand new expression / phrase / something. I’ll be running a competition over the next few months and all being well, with the usual helpful contributions from Chris, we should be able to craft something exciting.

This month, we have five stunning entries to tantalise your verbal taste buds.

  1. Silicon valley, tin can alley – when someone loses all their wealth and is reduced to nothing but poverty
  2. Whatever next, Timothy? – a general expression to say when you don’t know what to say, even if there’s not a Timothy nearby
  3. I lost my hat on the treadmill of life – response to a question where you want to avoid the real answer and need to leave quickly
  4. Cough it up, wank bread – a work in progress (insults are hard)
  5. Sometimes you make the crinkle, sometimes the crinkle you make – when you want to sound wise without displaying any proper evidence of this

There we go. I await your feedback. I’ll also be taking any nominations in the comments section so if you have something you say to yourself that nobody else does, and you wish to share it with the world, then come on over like Shania Twain and let us know!

Avatar The Face Update – Round Four

Hello and welcome back to my face.

It has been almost six years since the last update on my face and a lot has happened since then.

Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. Other than finding more grey hairs, more wrinkles and some weird lines appearing to the sides of my cheeks, it’s pretty much business as usual. My face keeps going on and on, and there’s not much you can do to stop it.

The photo I took isn’t great and I’ll have to apologise for the lack of fidelity; those lines keep appearing on all my photos, must be something to do with the lens. Let’s catch up with my face:

  1. Original Eyes – due to the recent addition of the Orb, they’re now running double, sometimes triple time. The strain is much more visible and in order to stay awake, more coffee has been input which results in bigger pupils and the chance of accidentally smashing a plate has increased sevenfold.
  2. Looking (tired) Eyes – even the original Eyes need to take a break every now and then. The LTEs are there to make me look dazed and confused.
  3. Confused Eyes – when even the most simple of tasks is way beyond me, such as finding a pen that works or opening a door without hitting myself with it.
  4. Inexplicably Happy Eyes – used for when the Orb gets to spend some time with grandma and grandpa. You look all weepy as though it’s so difficult to leave him behind and then whip out the IHEs when you’re reversing out of the driveway at 30mph.
  5. Spare Eyes – when all the other Eyes have been ran into the ground, I’m going to need a pair to get me back to the eye hospital to get more installed. They only last 24hrs but they’re worth it. You gotta have a spare.

I haven’t really felt the need to add any new pairs in ages. The fluctuations in the market, along with the ever-increasing price of eyes, has forced me to rely on most of the same ones from 2020. I do feel sorry for the Original Eyes who every day shoulder such a huge strain for the rest of the face. If I can find the time, I’ll send them away to a fancy spa for the weekend for rest and recuperation.

Thankfully there hasn’t been much need for eyes other than your day-to-day activities. If I was asked to, I don’t know, start planning a party for Dua Lipa I’d have to refuse; I don’t have the eyes to spare, Dua, ask someone else.

Jeez. Every Tuesday.

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.