The Capital of Grim

Have you ever been to Dungeness? I have, twice now. I’d be happy to go again because there’s nowhere quite like it.

It’s made of gravel, you see. Miles of gravel with bits of grass growing on it.

There are houses on the gravel, all made of wood and looking a bit battered. There are abandoned fishing boats on the gravel. There are rusting shipping containers dotted around randomly on the gravel. There are brick-built kilns standing on their own in a desert of gravel. There’s a miniature railway with tiny steam trains. There’s a lighthouse with a fog horn that makes a really loud beeping sound. There’s a massive nuclear power station. Everything is grey. And I really can’t emphasise enough that there’s lots of gravel.

It’s fascinating and lonely and strange. While I enjoyed being there, and will probably go again one day when I’m bored, it’s quite grim – the most beautiful and pure grimness anywhere in the world. Visit today! Dungeness, the Capital of Grim.

An actual sensible idea… ArtDisc

Hello, sorry to interrupt the usual nonsense, but I think I’ve had a great idea, and I’ve called it ArtDisc.

Or at least I think I have, I don’t think I’ve stolen the idea, I think I had it. It’s quite simple, but I’ll break it down anyway:

Everyone in the UK who owns a car right now probably owns a Tax Disc Holder due to the (until recent) need for everyone who owns a car right now to display a Tax Disc.
We no longer need to display a Tax Disk in our cars anymore here in the UK.
In a sad kind of way, I quite like my Tax Disc Holder, and I don’t want to throw it away or put it in a drawer to be throw away in a few years when I have a tidy out.
Why don’t we all put something else in out Tax Disc Holders?
ART! A photo, a picture your kids drew, a cut down post card with the Mona Lisa on it, whatever.
We’d have a nationwide, free to enter, democratically curated national art gallery.

Are you with me?

I like the idea so much, I’ve already made it a website: www.artdisc.co.uk

If you like it too, will you help me push it all over the interwebs and things so that other people might join in?

Any suggestions welcome.

The Kevindo Menendez Birthday Memorial Tribute Night Out – 2014 Edition

What happens when your birthday is shit, like dirt dog ass shit? When it feels as though someone has taken the time to use a straw to blow shit all over you and your life and then refuse to clean it up?

Thankfully this isn’t what happened on Kev’s birthday. It was a little weak but the company was swift and then getting wrecked at his parent’s house is always a welcome change from hanging out with the twelve year olds at the Gascoigne’s. It seemed fair though that in order to restore the balance something was required to levitate his birthday out of the doldrums and back into what scientists are now calling “Acebag Territory”.

How does one do this? It’s incredibly difficult to justify a birthday night out a full sixty four days after the day of the birthday itself. Luckily I’m not someone who feels the need to justify most of anything I do. So we did. The guest list was so exclusive only two people were invited. The timing was so tight there wasn’t enough time for pre-drink drinks or post-drink drinks. It was straight into the drinks. Here are a list of things we learned:

For the first two or three bars we witnessed several common phenomena which continued to repeat itself. Whichever place we went to would eventually have most of the patrons gone by the time we left. We also ran into pairs of lesbians as well as several other people who caught the same train into Leeds as we did.
Johnny Bobbins runs the tiny ticket desk at Leeds train station. When you don’t get a chance to buy a ticket on a train you have to visit his window where he uses his ticket machine from 1975 to produce one for you so you can get through the barriers. Kev has absolutely no respect for Johnny Bobbins. I do, but only so far as where his job is concerned. When he dresses up as a sexy witch I draw the line; whatever he wants to do in his free time is nothing to do with me.
The title for the evening was not decided properly until after the evening was over.
No matter where I go, no matter what I’m doing, I still seem to be able to attract both people I know and strangers. In this instance it was a guy from Hull for giving some change to a homeless man, a woman I work with also on a night out in Leeds and then some guy advertising a strip club who insisted he could help us get in with his help. I know I’m pushing 30 but I think I could make it down the steps unaided.
Don’t snaffle a full bag of Doritos after excessive drinking; it’ll make your mouth extra furry in the morning.
The Mixing Tin does no longer exist, and hasn’t for some time. Getting a drink there was excessively hard.

It’s clear that this should therefore be a regular thing. I invite everyone reading this to sign up for next year’s entry in the hope of broadening the horizons of the Kevindo Menendez Birthday Memorial Tribute Night Out.

Broaden indeed.

Proposal: Boring Beans

Good day to you.

I am here to propose a change to this website in light of recent developments.

The Problem

Recently things around here have been too exciting. In just the last three posts there has been talk of goats, owls and handkerchiefs. We cannot go on at this breakneck pace and our readership must surely be suffering from intolerable fatigue. Something has to change.

The Proposal

I now propose that we redirect our efforts and rename this website Boring Beans. In future, all posts must be classified as either “dull”, “tedious” or “soporific”. The colour scheme would be a relaxing mix of greys and beiges. Suitable topics for new posts will include:

A discussion of the merits of different methods of preparation for potatoes
A photo gallery of close-up pictures demonstrating the texture of a number of different bricks
A list of names for different shades of brown

Please give this proposition your fullest consideration and respond with your payment in full by cheque within the next seven days.

Thank you for your time.

Dr. Christopher J. Numbers

Best Laid Plans – Update

Every man has a dream.

Unfortunately it seems as though every dream comes with a cost and a price tag. Yes, both.

Not too long ago I stole someone else’s dreams. I wanted to have coast to coast goats in order to satisfy the need for goats. The world was crying out for goats and nobody was delivering them. Who was I to deny the world their dreams whilst satisfying my own at the same time?

So it happened. I wheeled out the goats and in one long, glorious line they stretched from Blackpool in the West to Scarborough in the East. It resembled something akin to Hadrian’s Wall, except with goats. It was like the Great Wall of China, but with goats instead of walls. And so the people came together and decided to name my wonderful wall of goats. It’s just a shame that they didn’t think to put more effort into it; Goat Wall.

The Goat Wall was an immediate success, even if Joey Essex did travel up and tried to cut it with a huge pair of novelty scissors. Fanatics took to patting the heads of each and every goat in the Goat Wall. Postcard enthusiasts took pictures and start selling photos of the Goat Wall several minutes before it had even opened, much was their frenzy. Members of the mailing list were picked at random and given signed photos of the most popular goats. It was exactly the kind of support the Goat Wall needed to get up and running.

That was it though. It seemed as though I had overestimated the need for goats and no matter what I did, even selling tickets from door to door like a common bed-wetter, the bright spark that once fuelled my dreams was dabbled with mascarpone. Even if I wanted coast-to-coast goats nobody else did. So now they stand, once titans in their field, now reduced to squabbling amongst themselves for the last blade of grass. I want to keep them but I’m sending them away to the farthest parts of the globe in the hope that maybe the world will appreciate them more than Great Britain. Maybe Global Goats is the way forward, and thus my dream morphs into something else. Maybe this time next year Global Goats will be one of the eight wonders of the world…

Wisdom of the 1970s

Yes, I know, the 1970s are now the often-maligned decade that brought us dodgy celebrities and brown corduroy flares. It is hard to forgive such things. But one thing the 70s did know a thing or two about is sunstroke. How do you keep the sun off your overheating head? The 70s know. The 70s have it all figured out, and it has nothing to do with expensive sun cream or buying an overpriced straw hat from an itinerant beach salesman.

Trendsetter

You start off with a short sentence to ease them in.

Then you lean back with a slightly longer one just to prove that you’re capable of doing more than stringing together a couple of flashy, sticky dib-dabs.

So, after what can only be described as the complete runaway success of my expertly put-together phrase, “Sweet Petunia!” it has unfortunately become far too popular. Everywhere I go these days it is being ushered on street corners, shouted on fruit stalls, giggled in dog-grooming parlours and whispered down sewer grates. It takes a brave man to take a step back and even though I still hold her dear to my heart I think it is time to retire, “Sweet Petunia!” and look to pastures new.

I was in recent discussion with Senor Menendez and Master Reuben about my plight and they too were sad to see her go so soon but understood my reasons for doing so. Getting rid of her was the easiest part; finding a suitable and equally genius replacement would be where the toil began. Luckily being around academics such as these, it was finger wiggle time within a matter of minutes.

Can you replace “Sweet Petunia”? Of course you can. You need something catchy, something clever but also something people can identify with. You don’t want to push that sweet, sweet candy away. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the worthy replacement:

“Penny Vincenzi!”

I would have had, “Barry Norman!” but Master Reuben came up with it first and told me I would have to pay him royalties whenever I mentioned it. You have to be quick off the mark in this game.

Best Laid Plans

Every man has a dream.

The great thing about dreams is that they can be as big or a small as you would like them to be. As long as they are relatively realistic then achieving them is just about putting your mind to it.

A man came to me at the weekend and told me his dream. He said that what he wanted most of all was a small herd of goats to keep at the coast so that they could enjoy the sights, sounds and marvels that the English coast do so well, and that when he feels like a jaunt to Scarborough or Filey he can share the experience with those very goats. I told him that such a dream was easily obtained and that he should immediately set about putting his affairs in order.

When a man has a dream though sometimes it just doesn’t go far enough.

Having set about the events so that the man could have his coast goats I then pondered the idea myself and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough. It would be nice to have some goats hanging about in Whitby, waiting for me to take them through the whale bones and then across the bridge for fish and chips, but how about a little bit more? What if I had goats not only at the coast but across the whole country? What if I could stop in for a cup of coffee at Costa and high five a goat on the way out? What if a goat would tell me when the bus was running late, or pass me a small pot of porridge when I’m running late for work? It would cost a lot but what about coast-to-coast goats?

Of course I did not reveal my plans to the man because he might steal them as I had stolen his idea. As well as this, his original idea would be besmirched by my much better plans and I am not prepared to besmirch my fellow man. He will eventually learn of my objectives and he will have to come to terms with them as the rest of you mortals.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Ideas