Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

Avatar Pay the Toll

You have to pay the toll. That’s the way it works.

In order to get past you have to stump up the money or whatever is needed. You have to satisfy the teller to avoid salmonella. You must grease the wheels to sort out your shady deals.

I am about to venture down South towards the magical, Icelandic borough of Royskopp in order to meet Sheriff Rockingham himself. I have heard terrible, terrible rumours of the gentleman who he currently lives with though. Hushed tones have informed me that Steve Steveingtons is a violent wretch. I once sent him a Superman t-shirt which he loved with all his heart. One day he wore it to the pub, somebody accidentally spilled some lager on it and the authorities are still finding bits of people weeks later, scattered around the neighbourhood. A man with a temper like this needs to be appeased.

So what do you do? I understand that Steve Steveingtons is a big fan of the Trek through the Stars, something from television. Biggles maybe? I have been daydreaming about weird things mashed together and this keeps popping into my head at work. I don’t think my pedestrian drawing skills have done it much justice, and it doesn’t look anything at all like the one in my mind, but I hope that it is enough to stop him knocking me literally into next week.

If this should be my last post let it be known that I regret nothing, not even all the Beans comics I wrote.

Avatar More of You and Your Orb

Now that the shock of having an orb instead of a child has disappeared, you can settle into a routine that fits the both of you. Remember that you have to get used to your orb as much as he or she has to get used to you. You are not an easy person to live with and people do talk about you behind your back.

In order for your orb to understand how to behave around children and other orbs you may to take them out to a soft play facility. Here, kids and orbs of all ages run or hover around in well-crafted industrial buildings that nobody knew what to do with, panicked and then threw some padding on the floors. You can watch from the safety of the coffee shop, with your half-fat vanilla latte, whilst your little one floats in and out of tubes, ball pools and slides. You will also get to listen as other, more smug parents (more smugger or smuggents as they’re referred to) chunter on about how their child managed to get into Cambridge University based on the contents of their last nappy.

Maintain your distance whilst also keeping a close eye on them. This is one of those contradictions that you often see in parenting guides because really, deep down, nobody knows what they’re doing. You want your orb to make friends without you, ironically, hovering about behind them. And you certainly don’t want to one of those dads that follows their orb into the soft play facility and proceeds to comment on every single thing they do, and then convince them not to go down the big slide because it may be “a little too scary” for them. You’ll get a slap round the man nuggets for conduct like that.

Sometimes a float through the park is enough to keep them occupied. With the sun on your back and the fresh air coursing around your orb’s complex series of gas, emissions and chutney, they will appreciate the time you have spent together. Make sure to take plenty of photographs and decorate your orb’s room with memories you have made together.

If they burn a likeness of you into a piece of paper, put it up on the fridge for everyone to see. If they build a statue of you using pasta and PVA glue don’t go with your initial reaction and throw it in the bin; be sure to make a lot of noise about how great it is, put a picture on Facebook and then put it in the garage in the box with the rest of the tripe, or throw it out of the window of a moving car on the way to work the next morning. It’s much funnier that way.

Avatar Kids today, eh?

Wrap up tightly for this one. It is gonna burn like a case of hot pie (hot pie!) cold custard.

What is going on with toys for kids? If you ask Old Man Kevvers what he ‘ad when ‘ee were a lad he’d tell you that it was a drawing of a stick on the pavement, drawn in coal dust, and each morning it would blow away before he had a chance to play with it. Times were different in the 18th century or whenever Old Man Kevvers was around.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to wander into a Smyths toy store then your eyes would be greeted by huge corridors of wall-to-wall dustbin fodder. They will stick a goofy face on anything and charge you fifty quid for the privilege, and your kids and your little sisters and your nieces and your cousins all want this steaming pile of excrement in their houses. Let’s take a look at some of the choices you have from my recent excursion to a toy shop with Professor Reuben:

  • Has your child or small relation recently been turned to stone by Medusa? Are you wondering what to get them for their birthday now that they have no pulse? Take a look at the Zipline Play Set for the recently petrified. All the fun of flying through the air on a piece of plastic. Make sure not to push them too hard otherwise they’ll shatter on the ground. Also works for those pesky ghosts refusing to pass into the next life.
  • Q: Where can we put something in an animal that isn’t provocative or sexy? A: In its mouth. Let me present you with the Number Crunching Squirrel! Put a piece of plastic in its mouth and watch it choke to death in the name of light entertainment. Jam disc after disc of brightly-coloured coins into Chip or Dale’s food pipe. It might play a song or add the numbers together, I don’t know, I was too horrified to find out.
  • I couldn’t walk past this without laughing. I’m very immature.

It was these three items as far as the eye could see. They are your ONLY options for future purchases. Break out the Kunst-Dose!

Avatar King for a Day

Early. Bleary-eyed. Rummaging through emails before work and there it is.

Now I have my fair share of luck like everyone else. I’m not swimming in lottery wins yet occasionally the cosmos chucks me a bone and a I manage a few numbers in the Chunderball. It’s a balancing act no doubt due to my years of annoying people and general sanctimonious behaviour. Yes, me.  Look at me.

“Congratulations! You’re our Mastercard Competition WINNER!”

I’m your what the what now? This email sat in my inbox is telling me I’m a winner. It is praising me for winning more than anyone else. I am a winner. I have won a VIP trip for two adults to attend the UEFA Champions League Final Madrid 2019. I would rather stick my eye sockets in a paste of pepper and lemon juice than have anything to do with fucking football but even so, it does come with hotel accommodation and a £250.00 prepaid card so I can stick twos up at the final and go off to get hammered in some squalid Spanish bar, where the locals can pick my pocket when I am stumbling back to my hotel room around 7pm or however long it takes for me to get wasted these days.

This is pushed to one side by my acute distinct overwhelming sense of pessimism. “What do you think you’re doing? You actually believe you’ve won a competition? When did you enter this competition”

“I… I erm I don’t er… I didn’t?”

“Well done, genius! You didn’t. Why on earth would you have entered a competition to win tickets to the UEFA Champions League Final? It’s clearly a sham. It’s a fake. They’re trying to scam your sorry ass for a quick buck.”

Having checked the details, even though it looked like a genuine email I was inclined to agree with my pessimism that it was some hoodlums attempting swindle the last few pennies from my account. Like with all great phishing scandals, I sent a message to Zavvi saying that I had received an email that looked about as legitimate as a Smidge Manly Coco Loco advertisement from Spain, and asked them to verify if this was the case. I received a response a few hours later, two responses in fact. It seems as though a lot of people had received the same email I had because the first reply was a mass-produced email from Zavvi apologising for their error. This was further confirmed by the poor customer service adviser who had to message me back to say that I had not won the tickets, as well as several tweets from people on Twitter who had gone through the same highs and lows as I had.

So in one sense I have missed out on the chance of flying to Spain to live out a brief fantasy of downing alcohol in a foreign country. On the other hand though I have avoided a poxy holiday based around a shit game of football.

Hotter Otter out.

Avatar Dear Beans… Crimson Colour Catastrophe

Dear Beans,

It has recently been brought to my attention that the world is not black and white anymore. It is a vibrant, colourful, smorgasbord of everything. I say everything because there are a lot of things now. I do miss the days when there were less things although I am quite happy talking to the small black disc in the corner of the room, especially when she plays me Captain and Tenille songs.

What disappoints me though is that there are no new colours. I want someone to come on the television and announce to the world, “Hey people! If you mix this and that you get a brand new shade! I’m calling it quotium brown!” I would prefer brighter colours though. There must be a new red or orange that somebody can rustle up like cookies from the cooker. We can’t have all the colours now that we’re only ever going to have. Forever. Forever and ever. People get so bored these days that they need new and stimulating things in order to keep them from going mad.

Do you think they are holding back on us? Are there scientists lurking within mountains, swirling ominous solutions in test tubes in the hope of squeezing out a new green?

If not, is there any chance one of you could invent a new colour and send it to me in the post?

Yours faithfully

Portia Cummerbund-Beige

Avatar Your Contact Numbers

Right.

Chris, I need you to call the Customer Service Desk; an old lady has turned up wanting to return a half-eaten box of grapes and exchange it for a soup ladle. Then when that’s sorted can you ring Captain and ask him if he has had sight of the whale in the last fifteen hours. There were a few blips on the sonar yesterday morning and if we need to start preparing the harpoons I would rather know now.

If Kev is still here and within an audible range, I need you to visit John/Michelle, who is currently in the middle of his/her sex change operation, and ask him/her to cover the deli counter over lunch because Barbara had to call in sick. Once that’s out the way can you make call Jane’s Cage to ask when she is likely to be able to move it to a more convenient place as it is clogging up aisle twelve and nobody can reach the tinned prunes.

Meanwhile I need to contact Wendy who, for some reason, has morphed into an Argos store. Before she starts selling reasonably-priced home and garden wares, in addition to electronics and toys, I must insist that she goes home and calls someone who is more qualified to deal with this situation. I also have to phone FTG (“Furious Toga Gargoyle”) who is parading around the freezer section and flashing his turgid, green dangly bits to anyone within reach. It really is more a matter for the police however I intend to deal with it before we escalate it to the correct authorities.

Let’s not dawdle now, people, we all have a busy day ahead of us.

Avatar Are you Common?

Look at you.

Who are you? What do you do? Are you common? I know that it is not very politically correct to ask this question however it needs to be asked. I know that I am common, mainly from the state of my shoes, but also because I eat like a duck with two mouths and I’ve never paid more than £20.00 for a plate of food. I am safe in the knowledge that I am common.

How can I be sure of this though? Is there a test I can take?

Of course there is. Following on from the raging success of my Cake ‘Appropriate Girlfriend (short skirt, long jacket)’ questionnaire now comes the ‘How Common are you?’ questionnaire, mainly based on the lyrics of the popular song ‘Common People’ by Pulp. Depending on how many of these metaphysical boxes you tick (because I don’t know how to ‘do’ boxes on here) dictates how common you, as in you, are. Take a squint at these.

Have you ever:

  • Rented a flat above a shop?
  • Cut you hair?
  • Got a job?
  • Smoked some fags?
  • Played some pool?
  • Pretended you never went to school?

Based on these, I can tick five out of the six boxes. I have never officially got a job and instead make my money by spinning pennies for sailors down at the socks. Do we still have docks? Yes, we still have docks.

That’s what I do. How common are you?

Avatar You and Your Orb

So you’ve taken the plunge and out comes an orb. Well done! Please refer back to my previous post before reading on because we’re British here and we don’t like getting ahead of ourselves (see here: ORBS).

You will be completely perplexed at first but that’s okay, relax! Everyone struggles with their first orb so you are not alone in your endeavours. Gently place the orb on the sofa next to you and carry on scanning this helpful article.

Your orb will still be quite small and easy to deal with. The most important thing is not to treat it like a piece of luggage. Don’t put it in your rucksack or man bag, however you roll in 2019, underneath your gym socks and your eiderdowns. This orb has feelings and whilst it may warm your socks in readiness for your upcoming “stretch session” you will not win any orbular points. Carry the orb in your arms, either out in front of you or cautiously tucked into your side. If you have the correct equipment you can put the orb in a carry case on your back so you have the benefit of being able to use your hands whilst knowing the orb is safe. It will also allow you and your orb to grow closer together because of the contact you share.

When your orb is having a fun time it will glow a warmish, orange colour; this way you know you are doing things right. If at any point they emit a loud shriek like a pigeon in a pair of stilettos then you know something is wrong. Similarly, if they display any colours towards a reddish hue then that is also an indication that you should look at what you’re doing. Occasionally your orb may confuse you further by glowing a purple or lavender colour, the same as Prince’s rain, which will either mean they’re happy but worried at the same time or that they need the toilet. We would strongly recommend keeping some orb bags with you at all times in case they have a little accident. Replacement dungarees are also to be encouraged.

There is a lot to do at first, so much that there is not enough (fake) ink and (fake) paper to cover everything, and you may feel overwhelmed. Remember that everyone learns from their mistakes and you are not the first person to pick up a little mess from the ground because you misinterpreted the colour scheme of your orb.

Love your orb and your orb will love you right back.