Beans Flashback

There have been no posts to the Beans since the start of April, and it’s the 20th now. What does that tell us? Well, clearly, it indicates that there is nothing of any interest happening this month.

Instead, let us take this opportunity to look back at early 2007 and ask ourselves what was happening on this day in Beans History.

It was in April 2007 that Chris Industries International Ltd. was sold to Richard Branson and became Virgin Petcare. There was controversy over the choice of kestrel as word of the week. And the Saint King thrust himself upon a world that did not yet know his taste for underhanded deceit.

But April 2007 was rather a quiet month on the Beans, and that was because we were all still reeling from the release of a video that I thought I’d lost completely. It turns out I do still have one shoddy, over-compressed version that I am going to post here. Ladies and gentlemen, celebrating its tenth anniversary, I present Seeing Not Doing.

Logical Dreamscape: Bowie Flashback special

It’s a year since David Bowie himself – best known as a regular guest on daytime TV series Essex Highway, of course – passed away. To mark the anniversary, let’s look back now on one of the most poignant and touching parts of his life, which is when he appeared in my dream a few years ago.

(harp music, screen goes wibbly)

It all started when I was driving a caravan around a giant campsite. We were trying to find somewhere to set up camp for the night, but most places were full and everyone was sitting outside their tents and caravans having dinner. Eventually I ended up accidentally leaving by a back gate that wasn’t for public use. I drove under a very low railway bridge – which luckily the caravan fitted through – and then went the wrong way around a roundabout to turn around.

I must have eventually got the caravan parked up because the next thing I remember is being at some sort of communal dining table – a big, long, wooden table with people sitting down both sides of it. The atmosphere was like a cross between a picnic and a viking feast. The table was in a long wooden building and it was dark outside. To my surprise, I was sitting next to David Bowie.

There was a lot of food on the table and people were passing plates around and helping themselves to all the lovely food on offer. I served myself a modest plateful, as did most people, but to my surprise Bowie reached across me to a plate piled high with thick slices of ham and helped himself to almost all of it, heaping his plate with lots and lots of ham.

I thought it was very rude that he would selfishly take so much ham for himself, but obviously I didn’t say anything, because he was David Bowie.

(harp music again, screen goes wibbly)

It has to be one of the best dreams I’ve ever had, hands down. It had it all: the feeling of being on holiday, a musician I hold in high regard, and of course an opportunity to go the wrong way around a roundabout. I hope you’ve all enjoyed sharing in this experience as much as I have.

A taste of Scotland

Where’s this guy been? He’s been taking a month off, is the answer, choosing to suffer the ignominy of a nasty dried pea on the Bean Counter for the sake of enjoying a month free of the obligations of blogging and commenting. Those arduous tasks take their toll on a man, even one as handsome as me, and a few weeks away from it make all the difference. I’m back now, fully recharged and ready to write more glittering blog jewels.

If you want a more literal answer to the question “where’s this guy been?”, then the answer is Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is a city in Scotland, famous for the coldness of the weather, the vivid orange of the Irn Bru, the fakeness of the tartan sold in tourist shops and the whisky. The other thing it’s famous for is its castle, an amazing fortress sitting high atop a rocky mountain in the centre of the city, and though few believed me when I told them, it is made entirely of whisky.

I tasted it, and it was delicious. Then I went home. #tastinghistory #edinburghmems

Things On My Desk: 2016 edition

Over the years, the Beans Massive have been careful and diligent in keeping each other informed about items on their respective desks. In 2008, Kev produced an inventory of items on his desk, which was turned into an informative pie chart, and then in 2011 I itemised the objects on my work surface.

More than five years have elapsed since the last update, so it is high time we found out what is now on my desk.

As of 13:57 BST today, the following list is accurate:

Two phones and two mobile telephones
A massive old fashioned sellotape dispenser that weighs a ton
A desk tidy, containing seven biros, three orphaned biro lids, four pairs of scissors and a hoop of white rubber foam with no known purpose
A cafetière, with damp coffee grounds at the bottom
A dispensing tub of antibacterial Azowipes
A remote control with a bit of paper sellotaped to it that reads “RR”
A blue folder containing lots of disorganised bits of paper, open at a page with today’s date on and a note that says “TOMORROW aft ed no” and another one that says “Matt regions”.
A dirty sheet of paper with lots of small writing, titled “Thirteen years and not so unlucky”
A red whiteboard marker
A manual for a laminating machine
A roll of sticky paper tape
My sleeves

In memory of Dick the Brick

We all remember Bert Papps. What a guy he was – but we’ve talked about him enough.

It’s high time we looked back at the life of another modern hero, one who few of us remember but whose life is charted in a thousand minor local newspaper reports of the late twentieth century. I’m talking, of course, about Dick the Brick.

I have to admit that I had never heard of this remarkable chap until recently, but a search of the Sutton and Cheam Gazette archives tells me that on four occasions – in 1964, 1972, 1980 and 1991 – he was drafted in by the Metropolitan Police as a medium and successfully used spirit guides to help detectives prosecute people who had been dumping trolleys in the canal.

Did Dick the Brick ever turn up in your local paper? Let’s unearth some more of his incredible life.

Fracking History: the Georgians

Hello and welcome to another edition of Fracking History, the top-rated infotainment docuhistoriography show here on Beans TV.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to be seeing what we can learn about the Georgians. We begin by drilling vertically downwards some 212 metres into the past, and then turn the drill head horizontally to push through a layer of sediment composed mainly of the late Qing Dynasty until we locate a rich seam of Georgian history.

Our loud, highly destructive machinery now begins pumping a mixture of water, sand and polyacrylamide into history at extremely high pressure. The delay while we wait for results is extremely tense, with our resident geophysical historian, Dr. Cornward Habsburg, nervously checking over his valves and dials. Eventually a thin, dark-coloured liquid begins seeping from the outlet valve, and we have our very first sample of the Georgian era.

What does it tell us about the aristocracy and the ordinary people of Britain in the eighteenth century?

Dr. Habsburg adds a few drops of hydrochloric acid to a sample of the liquid and places it in a centrifuge at a controlled temperature of 76° celsius. The resulting dark residue is then inspected under a microscope.

It reveals Georgian society in all its debauched, vulgar glory. The presence of particularly high levels of carbon nitrates can only be a result of the deeply unpopular Prince Regent openly enjoying affairs with a number of high society women and the early development of the gutter press in the form of short pamphlets and magazines printing salacious gossip.

It’s been a fascinating journey to an important point in Britain’s history and has brought to rich, vivid life a chapter of the past that can be so difficult to accurately reconstruct today. But all good things must come to an end. Join us next time on Fracking History when we’ll be using the latest hydraulic hammer drilling technology to break through a seam of solid, compacted Dark Ages to begin extracting parts of the early Roman era. Until then, goodbye.

Brian May or Bryant May?

It’s a common occurrence. You go to pick up some matches from your local supermarket and accidentally end up trying to escort the guitarist from Queen from the premises who has just stopped by to pick up a crate of aubergines. When the police take you for questioning you explain the situation and all the charges are dropped. I mean who hasn’t confused the match maker ‘Bryant & May’ with perma-permed musician and astrophysicist Brian May? It’s not like mistaking Dave Benson Phillips for a tin of beans; that just wouldn’t happen.

When we peer a little closer though perhaps there’s something else to it. Bryant and May were a company created in the mid-nineteenth century specifically to make matches. Nothing else. People were suggesting various other pursuits, such as tailoring, monkey hampers and Louise cream, but they were all ignored for the single reason most of them didn’t exist. Matches were definitely the way forward. The company was made public in 1884. Brian May was born in 1947, exactly 63 years later. Surely that has to be something more of a coincidence.

Similarly Brian May was born in Hampton, Middlesex. The original Bryant & May factory was located in Bow, London. Only 22 miles or so between the two and, accordingly to Google Maps, it takes over an hour and a half to drive in current traffic conditions.

Why has nobody investigated these things beforehand? Is it a conspiracy that someone, possibly Roger Taylor also from Queen, tried to cover up?

The matter gets even weirder when you then take into consideration Arthur Bryant and John May, the two detectives created by Christopher Fowler for his series of crime fiction novels. They are primarily based in London. Bow is in London and Middlesex is but a stone’s throw away. One of them smokes a pipe which must have been lit by matches. It’s all coming together the more I think about it.

Also May is the fifth month of the year. There have been 15 Bryant and May detective novels, which is a multiple of five. Brian May has been an active guitarist since 1965. There are five letters in the name ‘Brian’. Somehow all three of them are connected in a way that is still yet to be fully deciphered. I think I’m up the challenge though, at least once I’ve finished my stint as a quarry sprayer. If I, or me, or maybe even myself can solve this puzzle then it will guarantee notoriety for the rest of my days.

Robert Koch – The Musical

I’m not very into musicals. The whole idea of spending two hours watching people burst into song every five minutes, quite frankly, gives me palpitations of a rocky and unnerving manner that no amount of marshmallows can settle. It seems as though a lot of subject matter has been turned into musicals, both in the theatre and also in cinema.

Even Spiderman has been turned into a musical. My friend Steve took a trip to New York a couple of years ago and paid a hefty price to watch ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ which, apparently, has music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and The Edge. Which is just unbelievably crazy. I mean it is. Without even dwelling on it, that’s bonkers.

So what next? What will people look at and think that choruses and choreography can improve, that falsettos and furnishings can dazzle? It got me thinking though which, as most people will know, that’s generally a bad thing. Why not turn the spotlight on someone who I personally believe requires a bit more attention? One of those underdogs who never quite got the recognition that they deserve? Cast your mind back to Year 10 history, pull up a chair and listen to the story of good ol’ Bob Koch.

Robert Heinrich Herman Koch. Born 11 December 1843. The guy was so smart he taught himself to read and write before he started school. His research helped to identify the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax. I may be copying these details direct from certain wiki I mean certain websites but I deal in facts and not speculation. The man did a lot for medicine and microbiology and yet other than a statue in Berlin his name is relatively unknown.

Enter me. Amateur script writer and overall champion of the unappreciated. I think I’ve got the moxie to write a full play based on his life, with a dash of songs sprinkled generously over the three hour running time. I’ve been working on one this afternoon and I think you’ll agree that it has got something going on. I give you ‘Great Postulates!’:

Great Postulates!

It’s very simple, it’s on your tongue
I’ve got the recipe for an evening of fun
Down at the lab, test tube in hand
No time to dance, put down your jams

My report is imperative you see
It sets out what is necessary
To identify cultures, disease causing organisms
Those dark little things that mess with your rhythms
I’ve put pen to paper so read it loud
Something to make my country proud

Postulates!
I’ve established criteria
Postulates!
Erect your posterior
Postulates!
Cholera, tuberculosis
Postulates!
Here’s my prognosis…

I’m clearly onto a winner. If you would like to buy some shares in the production then please put some money in a brown paper bag and leave on my doorstep. Shares will be posted to you within 30 days.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Historical