Not What You Think

Look at this:

What you’re looking at is a blackboard located at my local IKEA which I recently visited. Now I am mostly an open-minded person but I am quite averse to worshiping characters of any kind, whether religious, fictional, good or evil, when I am browsing home furnishings.

I can only imagine the kind of chaos that would ensue if someone got down on their knees and started to worship a fallen angel near the sofa department. That I do not want. If I am going to spend two hours of my life on a Saturday afternoon slowly walking around the various sections of IKEA I would rather try to avoid a small group of people clustered around a statue or photo, with fire in their eyes, bowing up and down.

Luckily for me, they were done by the time I passed.

Do yourself a favour; steer clear of furniture-loving Satanists.

This is not breakfast

Most days I have breakfast at home before I go to work. I know how to do breakfast. Make some coffee, put some bread in the toaster. Some days there’s something more interesting like crumpets. Pour a glass of orange juice if there’s time. Any idiot can do breakfast.

Not, it turns out, the people who run the only food outlet in the building where I now work. No, as I descend the marble staircase into the atrium there are inviting smells coming from the cafe, but the company that runs the franchise don’t understand breakfast. The inviting smells will invite you to disaster.

During the day they sell health food. In the morning they sell insults.

Here’s their breakfast menu almost in its entirety:

Ham hock protein pot with poached egg, spinach and chia seeds: £2.35 [this is the size of a yogurt pot]
Scrambled egg protein pot with semi-dried tomato and marinated mushrooms: £3.70
Scrambled egg protein pot with chorizo and avocado: £3.95
Scrambled egg protein pot with Greek-style cheese, herbs and chilli: £3.70
Organic porridge with soya milk: £2.55
Coconut milk porridge with toasted seeds: £2.95
Cherry and pistachio yogurt pot: £2.99
Chia and almond bircher muesli: £2.99

That’s more or less it. There’s no bacon sandwich in there, no egg that is not scrambled, no porridge made with actual milk from a cow. (Fake milk from soya or a coconut does not actually make something that looks or tastes like porridge, it makes sloppy white soup with lumps in. I know because I tried it one hungry morning and it was worse than I could have imagined.) There isn’t anything bread-based, because bread contains wheat and wheat is not healthy. You can have a vegetable smoothie with your breakfast (including kale, cucumber and spinach) but you can’t have a slice of toast with butter.

There isn’t really any point to this beyond the fact that sometimes I get to work early and I want something to eat and when I go downstairs I find nothing but seeds and spinach. It just makes me very upset and very disappointed, and I don’t know how these people can do something like this to a fellow human being. That’s all.

Owl Kitchen. Or not?

When you’re walking around a shop there is a fair amount of pressure. You, as a consumer, need to spend your money otherwise the shop won’t be there anymore. So what will you buy? What wonders would you prefer to spend your hard-earned cash on?

For instance, would you like to buy this?

Now I am all for knick knacks and tat yet I am confused and perturbed as to what this owl wants. Clearly it wants to cook but it can’t spell ‘cook’ so it looks like it is asking for ‘cok’. So is this an owl with poor spelling and grammar? Was it the result of bad education?

Unless its eyes are the o’s but then there’d be three so the item’s message is ‘coook’ which is the kind of enthusiasm I can fully understand. But then why a spoon and a fork? Why is the owl trying to eat a fish when owls don’t eat fish?

I stared for a good five minutes at this the other day and I am still no further forward. Perhaps somebody else might be able to solve the mystery.

I like owls but this just seems wrong.

The problem with peas

Here’s a tragic story. Have a handkerchief handy to soak up your tears.

On Friday I got out my notepad and settled in to pay my fullest attention to Suggs’ 1995 masterpiece, The Lone Ranger. It will be the latest in my increasingly popular series of album reviews for the Beans.

Having made notes on each track, I packed up and set off towards North London to wait for Elena to finish work and so we could set off for the north. I’d be able to make tea and relax. I’d be able to write my album review. Everything would be great.

Unfortunately London had other plans for me. I can only assume that London actively wanted to prevent the world finding out my thoughts on the synth-reggae and two-tone cover versions offered by the former Madness frontman’s mid-nineties cash-in comeback, because it did everything it could to stop me writing that important and informative blog post. My fourteen mile journey took me three hours in the end, leaving me no time for tea, no time for careful musical contemplation and no time to share my thoughts with the world. I also had no time for lunch.

There are several tragic results from this appalling debacle.

You will have to wait until later this month to read my review, which should have been posted in April.
My next two album reviews will have to be delayed by an extra month, which means no Sade until June and no Shaggy until July.
I only made three posts in April which means I broke my long run of consistent four-posts-a-monthing which had run since December 2014 and scored a nasty horrible dried pea on the bean counter which makes me VERY VERY ANGRY INDEED GAAAAAAAHHHHH.

In short: bad traffic makes for very bad apples.

Next time I’ll take the tube.

Modern Life is Confusing

So… there’s nothing quite like the English language. It can manipulated and distorted in so many ways that what it resembles now is completely different to how it was a hundred, fifty, even twenty years ago.

That said, sometimes innovation does not happen overnight. You have to allow it to simmer for a while. It will bubble to the surface to get your attention when it is ready to do so. Don’t rush it, for the love of Buster Keaton! I was recently scouring the internet to look for a birthday present for my godson and instead stumbled over this.

Ladies and gentleman, let me present you with a link to the Animal Pig:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013PX3XYI

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Animal Pig you should know two important things:

This pig is an animal
This animal is a pig

Note how the two facts are very similar but also very different at the same time. I had gone looking for a present and alternatively received an education in how to refer to modern animals.

Now when I am on my way to a farm I can look forward to seeing the Animal Cows, the Animal Chickens and the Animal Goats. If I’m heading to a zoo I can feast my eyes upon the Animal Elephants, the Animal Giraffes and possibly, if they’re not too busy, the Animal Tigers.

I’m already working on a FUN leaflet for my nieces to explain that we’ve been doing nature all wrong and that we have to shift with the times otherwise we’ll just look simple.

In one sense, why did no-one tell me this sooner?! In another, awww, pigs.

Broken

In the last two weeks, the following things have broken.

My central heating boiler, which was broken for a week
My phone, which had to be sent off for a week and a half
My coffee pot, which still isn’t fixed
My watch, which still isn’t fixed
My iPod, which I had buy parts to fix myself

This has been dispiriting and distressing, and has severely tested my fortitude.

If you are thinking of breaking any of my possessions, or in any way modifying them so that they break in a seemingly accidental way, or if you become aware that one of my possessions may break or suffer a breakage-like incident, please inform me in writing at least two days beforehand so that I can prepare myself mentally and physically.

Thank you.

Knee windows

I’m definitely getting old. I mean, we all know this, it’s not news to any of us. But sometimes I still get surprised by my reaction to things.

The other day I was on a London Tubular Train. These are clever trains that have the corners sliced off so that they can run in the sewers. I was listening to a Radio 4 podcast (a sure sign of getting old – surely this should have been a stark reminder of my age) and minding my own business. The train stopped at a station and a young woman got on and sat opposite me.

It was at this moment that I realised that I am definitely getting on a bit.

Young Chris would have seen this young woman and thought well hello there. Young Chris would have been appreciative of her pretty face. Young Chris would have found his thoughts turning to the fact that she was wearing a grey tracksuit that dropped some hints about an attractive figure.

Young Chris isn’t here any more, though. No. Old Chris is at the wheel these days. Old Chris wants to know what on earth she thinks she’s doing out and about in January wearing a tracksuit with no coat to keep her warm. Old Chris starts his train of thought with the words bloody hell, isn’t she cold?

Old Chris has a Daily Mail style fit when the young woman sits down. He finds himself thinking well I never and considers folding his arms (but decides not to because he’s a bit arthritic, what with the cold and the damp lately). You see, lately, ripped knees have come back into fashion for those wearing jeans, and the rips have become ever sillier. It’s now fashionable to basically just have a huge hole where your knees can be seen. The young woman on the tube, though, was wearing a tracksuit. A tracksuit where the front of each trouser leg came in two parts, overlapping at the knee, with the result that when she sat down the fabric parted to show off her knees to the world.

She had knee windows.

Well, obviously I wrote a stern letter to the Telegraph at once, and blustered barely-intelligible words at anyone who would listen for the rest of the day about how ridiculous these young people’s clothes are. I mean, it’s just not on. I can’t stand idly by while people go around doing damn fool things like that.

Old Chris can’t be doing with knee windows. Old Chris doesn’t understand young people’s clothes any more. Old Chris isn’t fashionable.

Old Chris has decided to embrace old age. Old Chris is going to start wearing his flat cap more often.

Claim to Fame

Take a seat. Clean up your mess. In fact, you might want to reverse the order of those things. As long as you get them both done.

You should know that you may be within the vicinity of a local celebrity. Not that I like to spoil the surprise but the recent release of Dylan Moran’s newest DVD, ‘Off The Hook’, contains a very special treat for everyone. The main performance was recorded in London. The DVD, however, contains additional material that was recorded at The Stand in Newcastle upon Tyne.

If you listen very carefully you can make out two people laughing very loudly at the ensuing comedy. Audrey ‘Piledriver Transmission Cupcake’ J clocks in with two mighty guffaws and there’s an extended chuckle of chortles from Emma ‘Bat Pan Mants’ M. My laugh, sadly, was not robust enough to make the cut and therefore you will not be able to hear the lovechild of Frank Bruno, Jimmy Carr and Eddie Murphy tittering away in the background.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Annoyed