Newsboost – All is well in Benwell

Shock news today as an area in the North East of England has been crowned the World Health Organisation’s top place for mental health.

Benwell, an area in the West end of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has been given the accolade by the WHO after it was voted the best place to improve your sense of well-being, but it wasn’t an easy ride and did involve a drastic last minute name change.

“First impressions are everything and Benwell has been giving out the wrong kind for years now,” says local councillor Felicity Dropping. “We decided that it was time for a change and so some of the local school children suggested changing the name. All it took was erasing one letter. It certainly saved a lot of money when updating all the nearby signs.”

Benwell, now christened Be Well, has had a flurry of tourists visiting the area since the name change.

“It’s amazing how drastically everything has changed. We weren’t even trying for any kind of award. We used to be known for our crime statistics and now we’re known for our easy going nature and herbal teas.”

The place has seen a 700% rise in tourism since the name change, an unprecedented amount all things considered. This has mostly been Europeans, with a huge collection of Danish shoe makers flooding the town. The Local Authority are also looking to invest in the area to capitalise on this good will.

“We’re hoping Starbucks are going to build one of their drive through coffee shops, that will really add a touch of class,” Felicity continued, “we’ve also seen interest from McDonalds, McVitties and Donald’s dodecahedrons. Its such an exciting time for everyone involved.”

Only time will tell if Be Well will stay well.

2026 State of the Beans Address

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.

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:

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?

Thank you one and all.

ABOFB 39: An Oral History of Pouring Beans (ish)

In a slight change to the usual episodes, today we have a self aggrandising look back over our voluminous body of online work under the Pouring Beans name. Everyone does these thing on nice round numbers or important dates usually, but not us. No Sir. Basically we read our own stuff back to ourselves. We discuss:

Why is it called that?
How did it begin
Some McIver poetry
Remembering is fun

Sunday louche

What are Sundays for?

Are they for the regular weekly food shop? Do you procrastinate about doing little jobs through the week and then spam them all on the Sunday before a new week starts and they all reset? Do you spend hours in the garden trimming and pruning bushes and hedges so everything is perpendicular?

For me, I like to have a nice mix of jobs to do and lounging. I love a good lounge on a Sunday no matter the state of the weather. If it’s nice and sunny you stretch out and soak it up. If it’s cold and wet you wrap up and enjoy being inside. Come at me with whatever you have, Northern weather, I’ll take it all in. I can louche with the best of them.

No matter how hard I try though I can never be as louche as Daisy. She seems to be able to louche without even properly trying. She’s the grand master.

I heard a rumour that Kev really loves pictures of doggos so this seemed like a good idea for a post and I would heartily encourage anyone else with doggo pictures to post them here.

Ian’s holiday snaps – #2

And so it continues.

In Florida there are a lot of gift shops. A LOT. They want all of your disposable income and they will do whatever it takes to get you in their store. A lot of them advertise ridiculous statements such as “gifts as low as $1.99” or “five t-shirts for $9.99” and it’s all lies. You’ll go in to be greeted by five kids t-shirts for $9.99 or the kinds of cheap mugs that not even an auntie with bad eyesight would pick up and consider. All lies.

Initially I ignored these places because I knew what would be inside. Later on I relented for a laugh and, you know what? I was right. Laden with plastics of all shapes and sizes, pirated Disney goods, the kind of nonsense every gift shop has. It was a treasure trove of bobbins.

What made me sit up and notice though were the buildings themselves. Nothing in Florida looks new, in fact everything has this worn out faded murky visage which you get used to after a while.

This shop made me laugh because you notice it straight away and every time I walked past I would think, “mwear!” to myself. The best mwear in all of town. Ladies love top of the line mwear; purchase one today for your gal, fellas!

I also keep saying it in a Matt Berry voice for maximum effect.

Ian’s holiday snaps – #1

The best part of being on holiday is taking photos of things that people have zero interest in and then forcing them to look at them once you get home. It’s a legitimate way of being annoying because they instinctively want to know about your time away and you can show them through 10,000 photos of a camel.

Not that I’m on holiday with a camel. Far from it, me ‘n’ the V have been sunning it in Florida for almost two weeks. We’ve done a lot of walking, I’ve drank dozens of watered down sodas and eaten my way through many burgers, tasty barbecue ribs and steaks.

I thought it best to ease you into the holiday snaps with a couple of posts, tossed off in my quieter moments, showing all the excitement of Orlando.

First up is this one. This is a fantastic photo of me emerging from the 7/11 with my Frosty blue ice thing. It was a hot day and I needed some cool refreshment. To my delight, this only cost a dollar for some reason (it was advertised as costing more) so I had to capitalise on the moment. I was on my way to pick up lunch from Subway, a blinding buy one footlong and get another free offer which we used several times. That was a good day.

Shoe ‘n’ the Bin

Shoe: … left to relieve himself behind the back of Dixons.

Bin: Words to live by surely.

Shoe: It’s coming up tooooooooooo 14:04 this Tuesday afternoon. We’ve been on air since midday…

Bin: Hey, we’ve been broadcasting longer than that.

Shoe: Snappy as always, Bin. Ten years next July, isn’t it?

Bin: I’m afraid so. We’ve been inflicting these people for almost a decade, poisoning even.

Shoe: A decade of Shoe ‘n’ the Bin. Any highlights?

Bin: Nah!

Shoe: Insightful as ever. 14:05 and we’ve already taken you to the dizzy heights of ‘Since You Bin Gone’ by Rainbow and even though he really wanted to, I had to veto Bin from playing Rainbow and Kelly Clarkson back-to-back.

Bin: It’s two songs with the same name! How can you veto entertainment like that?

Shoe: It would be as ker-azy as playing Jennifer Rush, Frankie goes to Hollywood and Huey Lewis and the News one after another.

Bin: I don’t know what you’re referring to.

*honking horn noise in the background*

Shoe: This is why I’m in charge and you’re not.

*sound of applause*

Bin: Can you believe this? Recount! Recount! Après vous!

Shoe: In the next hour you can expect to hear the delights of Otis Redding with ‘I’ve Bin Loving You Too Long’, Charlene’s ‘I’ve Never Bin To Me’.

Bin: I’ve never been to her either. That’s a weird song.

Shoe: It is a weird song, yeah. Ending shortly before the half past news with the succulent sounds of Roxette and ‘It Must Have Bin Love’.

Bin: I tried to find her on a map once, spent hours looking for her, thought I clocked her in Leicestershire but it was Charnwood instead.

Shoe: The lovely government district borough of Charnwood. Shout out to anyone listening in Charnwood. Actually shout out to anyone listening.

*slide whistle noise*

Bin: Once that’s bin and done, we’ll be hitting 3pm with a bang because it’s SHOE HOUR!

*sound of an explosion*

Shoe: Never get tired of that, can shoe believe it? I’m not one to tease but if shoe were hoping to hear the Kinks, Rick Astley and Queen…

Bin: ‘Shoe Really Got Me’, ‘Never Gonna Give Shoe Up’, and ‘We Will Rock Shoe’ respectively…

Shoe: Then you’d best keep tuned in to the best radio show shoe’ve ever heard.

Bin: We’re here every day whether we like it or not.

Shoe: I need to confess something before we move on. I used to be a criminal, but I have since reformed my ways.

Bin: You never told me this!

Shoe: All true, all true. I would have carried on as well however after I had ‘Bin Caught Stealing’ I stopped and thankfully Jane’s Addiction set me on the straight and narrow. Take it away…