Good evening, and… can you hear me? Sorry, I thought I was muted. Good evening, and thank you for joining me via this video link. I am currently inside the crater of an active volcano and therefore unable to join you in person, but I trust that the pub function room is comfortable and that the buffet of assorted crisps and corn-based snack foods are going down well.
My name is His Holy Eminence The Right Honourable Lieutenant Colonel Professor Lord Sir Elbert Louche, QC (Retired), KBE (Retired, Reinstated), KVCO. It is my great pleasure to have the honour of presenting this, the twelfth annual State of the Beans Address.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
As the year draws to a close, your Pouring Beans Calendar 2025 is running out of pages. Luckily another one is on the way, and everybody should have their copy ready for the New Year.
This is going to be the sixth consecutive year I’ve had to find just over 310 things that we have said, done, drawn or written to fill the pages of a calendar, meaning I’ve had to find 1565 things already. In my quest for content I thought I would try something new. So in 2026, you can expect a lot of the pages to reference things that have happened on that specific day in the past.
The “on this day” thing proved to be a great way of coming up with things to fill a calendar, but to make it happen I needed to find out what has happened on each day of the year. Obviously I could find old photos and look at the day and time they were taken, which got me a few. But I needed something bigger. I needed nostalgia on an industrial scale. I needed an “on this day” machine.
So I made one, and now you can play with it as well if you like. It’s in a secret location on the Beans server here.
Give it a day of the year and it will find everything that has ever happened on the Beans that day. Every post, every comment, from both New Beans and Old. It will then list them all with the year they happened, from most recent at the top to most elderly at the bottom, and it will give you links to see them in their original homes.
It was just meant to be a means to fill a calendar, but I found it hugely enjoyable and thought you might like to play with it too, so there you are. Enjoy.
On Thursday, at work, I spent the day installing some new equipment as part of a project we’re doing. The desks in our control room are full of ancient PCs that are long overdue for replacement and we’re now, finally, replacing them with new stuff. That means taking the old PCs out, untangling all the existing cables so they can be removed, and then running new cables to all the screens and stuff.
It takes about four hours to do a single desk if everything goes to plan, and at the end of it you have cuts and grazes all over your hands and your arms from the cable ties and the metalwork and the unexpected encounters with sharp corners as you rummage about.
One of the desks I did on Thursday four screens, plus one more that had been there for years but hadn’t got a PC attached to it. It was always meant to get a PC to support some other new stuff we’re installing which is why I’d put it there all those years ago. Thursday was the day it finally got wired up to something.
I ran a new video cable for it easily enough, but then I had to connect the touchscreen. The USB cable came out of the back of the screen, ran neatly down the monitor arm, and then vanished into the desk. Inside the desk was a rat’s nest of a million identical cables. I looked at this and then said some swear words.
Then I looked in the pod where the PCs live, because that’s where the cable would have to end up, and in there was a trailing USB cable. Attached to the cable was a green paper label. Written on the green paper label, in my handwriting, were the words “touchscreen USB for 5th PC”.
Thanks, Past Chris. You’re an absolute legend.
That would be enough good deeds, you’d think, but he did it again.
Just now I thought I’d better make a start on the Pouring Beans Calendar 2026. I opened the Pouring Beans folder on my laptop, and inside that I opened the Projects folder. (Kev may want to take notes on this example of a useful filing system for his work on the podcast.) I was going to make a new folder in there called Calendar 2026, but there already was one. That’s strange.
I opened it. Inside it I found this.
And when I opened that folder, I found this.
Inside those folders are 240 photographs, which are an extremely welcome sight when I have 315 blank calendar pages to fill.
He’s only bloody gone and done it again.
Thanks, Past Chris. If I ever get to use a time machine I’ll come back and return the favour.
Whatcha doing with that dog? Are you bothering it? Is it that awesome that you can’t help but bother it and want to spend time with it? If that’s true, then you need to join the ‘Dog Botherers’.
You shouldn’t feel ashamed about your behaviour. There are thousands of awesome dogs out there. They’re sat with their owners out in real life which is great but sometimes you can’t bother them because they’re doing their own thing. That’s upsetting.
At ‘Dog Botherers’, we don’t mind if you bother our dogs. Our weekly meetings are designed for people like you to bother dogs in a safe and friendly environment. Come meet like-minded individuals over a hot cup of friendship and a generous plate of fun biscuits.
If you like dogs, bothering your dogs and bothering other people’s dogs then ‘Dog Botherers’ is the place for you.
I know you’re all excited for next week and I could hardly contain myself so I’m writing the post early. Wilmot’s week is dedicated to the adoration, worship and general appreciation of the great Gary Wilmot. It’s a chance to really kick back and enjoy yourself and all of the joy that Wilmot has brought to the world. The best part is that it happens completely at random meaning you have to stay alert (and download the app) to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the celebrations. Sure, it’s next week yet it could also be the week after that, the start of next month or around your birthday. Wilmot’s week takes no prisoners. It’s completely unhinged.
Recently I have been pondering what wor Gaz could do next with his startling career. He’s already an accomplished singer, presenter, actor and entertainer; what’s left? Open a restaurant, one themed around terracotta jug western hoedowns or rats that look like footballers? No, that would be silly. We need something sleek and modern. We need a Gary Wilmot video game.
It can’t be something cheap like a mobile game. It has to go all the way, multi platform and nothing but the best. I want to see Ps5. I want full scale Steam trailers showing all the exquisite gameplay on offer.
I was hoping it’d be a disgustingly violent first person shooter however i was told by his manager that this wasn’t the kind of image they were hoping to portray to the general public. We’ll therefore keep it nice and cosy, set it in a warehouse and have Gary as some kind of, I don’t know, eccentric warehouse manager. He can have a tea cosy on his head instead of a hat. Then when you finish the level he’ll tip his head to one side, whistle and say, “It’s time for a brew!” That’ll make all the grandma’s chuckle with delight.
To make it as accessible as possible it should be a puzzle game. Everyone loves puzzle games, right? The same as everyone loves detective TV programmes set on boats featuring washed-up pop stars? So wor Gaz has to help you sort out items in a warehouse. We’ll get a custom made soundtrack from the Papples and soon we’ll be hoovering up the awards.
It will take some doing, the hours will be long and arduous but stick with me and we’ll really make a difference. Now all that’s left to do is a quick check to make sure nobody else has…
Blessed as we are to be alive in the year 2025 so that we can witness, ummm, the release of the Lego Gameboy after all this time. Praise be, we are blessed.
We’re also blessed for a number of reasons which I won’t go into here. That’s too boring. What isn’t boring is talking about apples, right?
Right?
Last year after we moved into the house, we noticed that one of our neighbours further down the street would regularly leave a box on a little table with a sign saying, ‘help yourself’ or, ‘free to a good home’. In said box were apples and sometimes pears. I took a couple home and they were delicious, all the more delicious because they were free.
Fast forward to a week ago and there’s a knock on the door. Our next door neighbour held a bag of apples in her hand, handed them to me and said, “if any pears from our tree happen to drop in your garden, take them. They may need a few days to ripen but otherwise they’re fine to eat.” Unbelievable generosity. I had ten free apples in my hand and carte blanche to gorge myself on pears. Pear gorge? Pear gorge.
Fast forward to Friday afternoon. I’m still making my way through the apples when there’s a knock on the door. The husband of the neighbour from the previous week hands me a black bin liner containing roughly twenty-five apples. Twenty-five! I have to ask.
“Does every house on this street have an apple tree apart from us?”
The neighbour laughs. “Possibly. Before the houses were built, this was an orchard. There are some houses that have plum trees, pear trees, cherry trees, all kinds of fruit.”
Out of all the fruit in the world, what did we get with our lovely house? A f*cking gooseberry bush. Nobody wants gooseberries. They’re about as versatile as a quince. I also now have to find some way of consuming twenty-five apples on my own because Vikki is more into strawberries and other berries. I’m not being ungrateful, I am super pleased to have free fruit in my fridge, and *somehow* I will chug my way through all dem apples. Look at me and be inspired.
The last time I visited home, my brother thrust this into my hand before I left.
“Don’t be leaving without your Perky Nana!” he said with a wistful look and a tear in his eye.
Actually, none of that happened. He did give me a weird chocolate bar and told me to take it home. I did and then I stared at it for a month or so.
It’s an unusual confectionary item; chewy banana filling covered in milk chocolate. I ate it on a particularly warm day so it was even chewier than usual. The filling stretched out like cheese on a pizza. It tasted like foam bananas, a winning flavour in my book but a bit too fake and artificial for some.
I’ve never seen it before. The back of the wrapper had an Australian address on it, so perhaps it’s in every corner shop and supermarket in Canberra. I don’t know. What I do know is that it’ll be a long while before I get another Perky Nana in my mouth (waaaaaaaaay!).
