Nish lives on

I decided I was too “hairy on the go” and needed to cut down on a bit here and there. The most obvious place was the top of my head so I decided to go for a haircut.

Modern life dictates that if you do not have a preferred barber or hairdresser then you have to choose the one that’s most convenient for you. I have tried a number of places over the last few years and can’t quite settle on one. They’re all fine, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing too special to go back to though (apart from the one where they gave me lots of coffee and made a huge fuss over my haircut however it cost twice as much as usual). There are two barbers near my work so I opted to walk past both of them, gauge how many customers were in each and select the one that was the quietest.

I meandered into the barbers with a queue of one and a half in front of me (the half was already in the chair and almost done by my eye but then spent another ten minutes having very little to nothing done to his bonce) and took a seat next to a glass cabinet of hair supplies and accessories.

It was a warm day so I stared nonchalantly out the door and around the room. It was then that my attention was immediately brought to the collection of items a little above my eyeline:

There it was. Nish Man hairspray.

In my mind what happened is that our mythical status grew and grew so much that we spread to the outer parts of Europe and Asia. There a large group of Turkeys (Turkians, Turkish? Turkpeoples) decided that in order to spread the word of how talented and funny we were, they turned us into an aerosol. I know it’s not the greatest explanation but what were you expecting, really? It’s me here, everyone.

It’s a legacy of some kind I suppose and one that will make your hair a good hair. I had a look and there are other products available for all your grooming needs including wax, hair wax, hair on wax hair, volume powder, styling powder, hair on wax powder, eye gel, eyebrow powder wax and strong fixative yellow.

Now available in all good barbershops.

Missing, presumed busy

Dearly beloved we are gathered here today to cast a keen eye over the mostly-absent third member of the Beans trio, Mr Kevin Hill.

Hill is not dead or missing after hiking through the foothills of Cheveley or anything suspicious like that. We know that he’s still flobbiting about somewhere, possibly in his lovely house or one of the many, many locations he has to drop and/or pick up his kids from.

He has a made-up job title (at least according to his Linked-In profile) and may or may not still be running some kind of poodle grooming business on the side. Is this what takes up all of his time? Are dogs the reason he doesn’t visit anymore? Expert analysists seem to suggest so.

The important thing is that we remember he is still a thing and remembering is fun. Though he may have abstained from posting anything for the last eight hundred years, though his track record of editing and uploading the podcasts is as sketchy as an afternoon with Vincent Van Gogh, Kevin is still a valuable edition to the team and we all look forward to seeing his cheery little face once again.

Shrimp!

We have fish, we’ve had them a while but recently we had to move the tank out of the playroom to make room for Lego to be displayed. We didn’t really have anywhere else for them to go, so they went into the kitchen, and because its a kitchen the only place for them is in the window.

Apparently in a window isn’t the ideal place for a fish tank, as there’s too much light so christ knows how fish cope in nature. After a few weeks, sure enough we’ve started to get some algae growth in the water… whats the best way to deal with algae in a tank? Move it out of the sunlight? Chemicals? Nope, apparently its shrimp.

More impressive when you look up how to buy shrimp, is that you can buy them off eBay… through the post… alive.

I know, its mental. So say hello to “Wiggles” and “Swimmy Shrimpy”, named by the kids naturally…

ABOFB 32: Conspiracy Theories

A Breath of Fresh Beans returns triumphantly after only 371 days since the last episode. We’re still ploughing through the wealth of recordings made during the various Covid-19 lockdowns, so its still technically series 4.

Anyway, we burst back into your ears to discuss:

Finland
Paul McCartney
Popcorn
Tinned Bears

Minutes from a Meeting

Meeting held on the evening of Monday 6 February.

Those present: Kevin Hill, Christopher Marshall and Ian McIver.

It was decided that the British Mash Council (or BMC) would be formally appointed in lieu of the existence of one.

Kevin Hill (KH) decided that Chris Marshall (CM) would be in charge of historical preservation of mash, historical important of mash and everything associated with these. KH also decided that Ian McIver (IM) would be in charge of croquettes.

KH said that CM should go to London, given that he is the closest geographically, to ask for money from either the PM or the Treasury to fund the BMC. CM offered no resistance to this and seemed on board with the idea.

IM then announced that all the money should be “poured into croquettes”. General acceptance all round although KH specified that some of the budget should be kept back for other projects.

CM asked about whether recipes that incorporate mash but were not mash-centric should be focused on. KH decided that it would involve too many other governmental departments and thus only primary mash food should be championed. CM mentioned classic mash dishes such as ‘Bubble and Squeak’ and ‘Colcannon’. KH misheard the latter and asked what a dove cannon was.

CM asked about the museum that was being discussed and whether it should include statues of celebrities made out of mash. All members were in favour. In addition to Winston Churchill and his glorious beard of mash, the following other people were mentioned: Paddy Mashdown (CM), Richard Mashcroft (CM), Mashley Cole (IM), Mike Mashley (KH) and Jayne Middlemiss (IM). Costs and expenses not discussed. Also possible crossover event with Mash vs The Evil Dead (even though it was cancelled after three seasons).

Dove cannons are to be used at all mash events except ones in small rooms where firing doves into the walls will end with calamity and death.

Mashvertising is to be brought back in full force. The importance of mash needs to be re-introduced back into the homes of Great Britain after being in abeyance for so long. IM asked what the thoughts were of seminal kids’ programme ‘Bodger and Badger’, unanimous approval from all members. It was then motioned that they would be used in the mashvertising promotions… until it was discovered that the actor who played Bodger had sadly passed away in 2017. A new face will need to be sought and daughter of Bodger (“Bodge daught”) may be a prospect. To be discussed at a future meeting.

General mash talk occurred for several minutes.

Next meeting was agreed for Thursday 16 March.

Christmas haul

It was a good Christmas. Many lovely things were received. This is a totally sincere, non-cynical post to say thank you for the nice things I got.

Kev sent me Bob Mortimer’s new book, The Satsuma Complex, which looks brilliant. I’ve been wanting to read it and I really enjoyed his autobiography so this is great.

Continuing the Reeves and Mortimer theme, Ian sent me this Mulligan and O’Hare t-shirt, complete with the lyrics of my favourite Mulligan and O’Hare song. It’s brilliant.

Ian also sent me disc 2 of Carmen Electra’s “Fit to Strip” workout DVD, but I’m determined not to let it spoil my enjoyment of everything else.

You can spell that word…

For years now the scholars behind the scenes at beans HQ have been trying to work out how to spell two of the English languages’ favourite spoken words but without success. We are talking of course about casj/cazsh/caj and the ever lovely (to quote Ian) “jush… juxch… jgusssh”.

Well the time has come to make an announcement, this has been researched, checked and casually googled at least twice, and we can now confidently write down those two words correctly for the first time in history…..

Read More: You can spell that word… »

AI Knows you well…

Our robot overlords are coming, its only a matter of time, but they will come. For now though AI is still either used to sort through spreadsheets faster than a human, help robot dogs open a door or for titting about making pictures from text commands.

With that last option in mind, I headed over to a text-to-image AI tool and typed in our usernames, and I think you can see that the AI mind has synthesised us perfectly.

A request for images of “Chris5156” gives us the all familiar images of Chris going about his business as some sort of train, or as we often see him, adorning the cover of some sort of sports magazine.

Searching for dear old “Ian ‘Mac Mac Mac Mac’ McIver” brings us similarly familiar results. We all know Ian is a keen lover of football, ominous framed symbols and his ginger hair is the envy of many.

“Kevil” meanwhile returns results of bizarre bird creatures and bald businessmen… spot on!

Just to round-out the set, I checked in on what the computer brains had to show in its databanks for “Pouring Beans“. I wasn’t disappointed. It nailed the pouring rooms at the back of the beans perfectly, right down to the floating sieve and the denim uniforms…