Dangle a dongleA dongle is a gay wooden jigsaw puzzle designed to hang on the wall.
It comes with your own initials carved out of it.
And you can choose whether you have a bird, cat, dog, Christmas tree, train or flower motif at the bottom.
Directions: use paper and an envelope. Enclose 80p for each letter of your initial or name.
Ask for: a dongle. State the initials and motif that you want.
Write to: Dept FSFK, Puzzleplex, Stubbs Walden, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN6 9BY
Puffins?Ian and Chris have both had multiple shots at this… so this year its my turn. Its a huge honour, I know, but I’m ready. I can do this. I’ve got it. Leave it to me.
Recently we did a trip ‘ooop norrrth’ to Amble, which confusingly isn’t Ambleside where I’m heading in another few weeks time. Anyway, this Amble is on the Northumberland coast, and just a bit further up is Seahouses. In Seahouses you can get on a boat. The boat will take you to an island. The island is called Inner Farne. Inner Farne is full of… PUFFINS!
Here are some actual pictures of actual puffins I took with my own camera-phone…
AnnouncementsAs we dwell on what it is to be human, how it is to act and treat others, and other big questions such as these, occasionally you sit down and decide that all of that can be pushed aside for the moment because there are more important things to consider. I mean, I could wax lyrical about the *checks* state of growing marrows in grow bags for hours on end, but who would really take the time to read it? Would you? I didn’t think so.
What you need is something to get excited about. What you need is a big ole’ bag of news that I can throw over you and you’ll drown in all my tasty, tasty titbits of information. I am doing it right now, as you read this; if you try to swim you won’t be able to from all the bumpy pieces of gossip I am using to weigh you down. You may be gasping for air and I am going to squeeze the life right out of you.
Actually, that sounds pretty threatening, so I’m not going to do that. Have a bunch of announcements instead:
If anyone else would like to announce anything then please do so.
23kHzOn the recent Beans outing to Dublin, I briefly mentioned the frequency profile of FM transmission and the reasons we have alarms connected to certain frequencies. Since this raised a small eyebrow of interest I thought it would be a good idea, from both an educational and bean-scoring viewpoint, to expand further on this subject.
Settle in, this one’s going to be wild.
Expert analysis
… and in the end we had to chuck the fridge and finish the race in second place. I think it was worth it overall, especially considering the state of the floor.
Well, I can’t you lovely people here all night. I would like to thank you all for coming and listening. It’s not often that I get to speak on such a specialised topic, especially for a large group of people. We all need to remember that being an expert doesn’t always required three degrees and ten thousand hours of practise, sometimes it can be done without knowing, unwittingly even.
I trust you will take my words to heart and carry forth the message to those who couldn’t make it. There’s a plain black joggers wearing people in all of us. Thank you and goodnight!
Clock changeJust a reminder that all your clocks will need to be changed this weekend. I’ve just sorted out the ones at work.
H-A-L-L-U-M-IBack in July 2020, Ian was carrying out some gentle archaeology among his possessions, which had begun to settle in accreted layers like sedimentary rock. In the midst of a rich stratum of shopping lists and half-finished song lyrics, he stumbled upon a miniature Sacred Book, and reported this to the Beans.
The booklet runs only to four pages in a bigger book that is otherwise full of other tat, and records the events that took place in the Magic Lantern pub in Whitley Bay (which later became a Harvester, and is now, of course, a Miller and Carter). In-depth scientific analysis of the occasions on which all three of us were in Newcastle, cross-referenced with the visits that had not produced a full Book, suggests that this was likely to have been in 2009.
We begged Ian to scan in these pages so they could be added to our collective store of wisdom on the Beans. We implored him. We offered him trinkets and prizes and financial incentives in discreet brown envelopes. But he resisted, and no scan was ever made.
Well, I don’t know about you, but my patience ran out, and it ran out at about 6.30 this morning. So I took the dodgy photos he had posted to the Beans, straightened and corrected them, and produced decent quality images of all four pages which I have now added to the Beans, bypassing the whole sorry business of Ian having to scan them. I have titled this new book “H-A-L-L-U-M-I”, that being the first thing written in it.
Its four pages contain an amazing number of in-jokes that survive to this day:
So, there it is, a lost slice of history, saved for the benefit of the nation. You can find it in the Books section.
Beans flashback: Chris gives bloodCan you believe that one of the defining moments of my life, and probably of yours too, was ten years ago today? The New Beans didn’t exist back then, so I didn’t record this for posterity as a blog post. The ten year anniversary seems like a good time to put that right.