Trekkin’ Abroad: More France

I went to France again, this time for two actual weeks. I made a number of important discoveries to supplement the important knowledge I gained on my last visit.

France has almost no vegetables. Eating green things is considered suspicious and even ordering a “salad” in a restaurant will cause you to be served with a steak, a large portion of chips, a thick peppercorn sauce and a single leaf of curly lettuce. This is not a bad thing in itself, but I am concerned that the majority of the French population may be permanently constipated.
My skin, especially the skin on the top of my head which has only really been able to see daylight for the last year or two, is liable to burn even when protected by a hat and a layer of factor 30 suncream thick enough to dip crisps in.
I am suffering pastry withdrawal symptoms.
French kitties who live in flowerbeds in the street do not want to be your friend.
Forgetting to post to the Beans while away will cause you to lose one bean on the Bean Counter. The Bean Counter is unforgiving of holiday time.

I was hoping to gather more information over a two week period, but the French are a crafty people, and ensured I was plied with excellent beers, wines and artisanal ciders, so to be honest I don’t really remember much of it and the four points above are all I came away with.

Licenced

What do you do when life makes you weary? How do you lift your spirits from a state of malaise? Well, I don’t know what you do, but I get myself down to the Lego Store with my VIP card on double points day.

On Monday I bought this.

I haven’t actually built it yet because I’m, you know, preparing to move house and everything, but it’s sitting there in its box just waiting for me. The anticipation alone is enjoyable. Anyway, this particular set is only available from the five Lego Stores in London at the moment – nowhere else and not online – and if you took the trouble to go down there and get one, and you flash them your VIP card like I did, you get handsomely rewarded with extra qualifications. My new set came with this.

Yes, you saw right. I am now the proud holder of documentation that proves I am qualified to build and drive this bus. (The cards are individually numbered so I think I’m only the 209th person to get it as well.)

So in future, if you want to build some Lego, that’s fine, but you won’t be getting anywhere near this one unless you’re the holder of a driving licence like I am.

It Had To Happen

Self-fulfilling prophecies; funny, aren’t they? They are the “I told you so” for the individual. For me they do not happen very often but on occasion they creep up to bite me here, there and everywhere. Sometimes all you will do is play through a scenario in your head and think, “that COULD happen, but it WON’T happen.” Why won’t it happen? Because I am a smart, intelligent human being who is capable of great things.

Yes, great things but also deeply, deeply stupid things.

Let me set the scene for everyone; Friday morning, pretty early. I’m awake but not fully awake so I shower and get dressed for work as per usual. Our bathroom has the very helpful location of not being anywhere near natural sunlight so if you need to see things you have to turn the light on. I don’t like this, using any light during the day seems silly, so I do try to avoid using it as much as possible. I stumble into the bathroom to brush my teeth and carry out the rest of my daily routine: brushing hair, applying cologne and finally ending on some sweet, sweet roll-on action.

Yes, Kevin, it is still the 1990’s.

As I finish I put everything away and turn to leave only there is something amiss, something different that shouldn’t be happening. There is a warm sensation tingling under my armpits that wasn’t there before. “Hmmm,” I think, “that’s a bit unusual.” I leave the bathroom and enter the bedroom, the feeling is a bit more potent now, in fact it’s getting hotter and hotter. “What on earth…” and then it hits me. The thing that could happen but won’t happen. The instance that no self-respecting person would ever find themselves in.

When my ankle wasn’t so great I was using some deep heat to help ease the pain. I was lucky enough, rather than a tube, to get one which is similar to a roll-on where you can apply the deep heat quick and easy. This is located next to my usual roll-on; I had decided not to keep them separate, like a smart person, but ensure that they remain very close by.

In the darkness of the bathroom, without the help of someone with a brain, I had applied deep heat to my armpits. I toyed with the idea of just ignoring it however the sheer speed at which it worked forced me to return to the bathroom (lights on this time) and wash it off as much as I could. It took approximately three hours after this for the burning to reach an acceptable level.

Needless to say, this shining example of COULD/WON’T hopefully will inspire others to either avoid this remarkable pitfall or to come forth with their own stories of embarrassment.

Frankenstein’s sideboard

If you read the papers you’ll already know that Kevindo Menendez – now properly styled Lord Chang of Micklefield – recently sold his former home, a palatial residence that he had spent most of his life enlarging and expanding to a size copiously documented here in the past.

A property of that magnitude, crossing numerous county and parish borders and easily visible from space, naturally fetches a handsome price, and so the estate he has now purchased with the proceeds is one of the largest in the world. I understand it has its own representation at the UN and is a member of NATO.

I was recently offered the privilege of visiting this magnificent residence where I helped Chang himself assemble new furniture.

Ikea do not sell furniture even nearly big enough for this new house, and their normal wares would look like miniature dolls house furniture in its cavernous rooms. That’s why we took several flat-pack kits and re-engineered them to build this behemoth.

The people from Guinness have not yet visited – or rather, to be strictly accurate, they came as soon as we called but they are still travelling up the driveway and are due to arrive a week on Thursday. But we fully expect this unprecedented masterpiece of joinery will be officially confirmed as the largest sideboard in the Western Hemisphere when they finally see it.

A fine view

We all know how wonderful it is to lay one’s eyes on a beautiful prospect. It can be a true balm for the soul. (Those of us with five or more pairs of eyes presumably get even more from the experience.)

As an avid looker at lovely things of every description, you can imagine my excitement when I came across this sign, promising riches beyond imagining.

I was, of course, hoping for something truly breathtaking, like a city of dazzling bejewelled exotic domes and turrets glittering in the desert sun, or my own face hewn from solid rock in a rugged depiction occupying the whole side of a mountain. What I actually got, 450 metres later, was some countryside with some trees and that.

To say I was disappointed would barely hint at the extent to which this grand promise went unfulfilled. But I’m determined nobody else should suffer the same fate, so I am having the field boundaries adjusted across the whole of the parish so that, in future, others gazing upon the allegedly fine view see my face depicted therein, and they will know that they really have seen the finest view England has to offer.

You’re welcome.

What is a Pound Minute?

We may have invented wireless communications, put sailors on the moon and shortened the English language to within an inch of its life, but what is a Pound Minute?

The Pound Minute is a way of working out whether doing something is actually worth your while. It measures the cost received for the action being carried out and confirms whether you should or should not do it. The Pound Minute has been alive for several decades but is only now receiving the attention it so rightly deserves.

Say, for instance, you were asked to paint your friend’s fence. They provide you with the paint and overalls, and maybe even lunch if you play your cards right. The fence will take approximately three hours to paint, both front and back, and you have to apply at least two coats of paint for it to be considered a worthwhile job. Your friend will pay you £10.00 per hour of painting that you do.

If you choose to carry out the smallest amount of the painting required, which is six hours, you will earn £60.00. This equates to six Pound Minutes. This is a good use of your time but will make your friend think twice about asking for your services again.

If you choose to carry out the right amount of painting required, which is nine hours, you will earn £90.00. This equates to nine Pound Minutes. This is a bad use of your time, but it will make your friend think of you in a new light because you are going the extra mile to ensure that fence is gleaming like grandma’s keys.

Those of an indecisive nature can also utilise the ‘Wheel of Thrusting (TM)’. Future versions may be able to calculate Pound Minutes on your behalf.

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

Owl Kitchen. Or not?

When you’re walking around a shop there is a fair amount of pressure. You, as a consumer, need to spend your money otherwise the shop won’t be there anymore. So what will you buy? What wonders would you prefer to spend your hard-earned cash on?

For instance, would you like to buy this?

Now I am all for knick knacks and tat yet I am confused and perturbed as to what this owl wants. Clearly it wants to cook but it can’t spell ‘cook’ so it looks like it is asking for ‘cok’. So is this an owl with poor spelling and grammar? Was it the result of bad education?

Unless its eyes are the o’s but then there’d be three so the item’s message is ‘coook’ which is the kind of enthusiasm I can fully understand. But then why a spoon and a fork? Why is the owl trying to eat a fish when owls don’t eat fish?

I stared for a good five minutes at this the other day and I am still no further forward. Perhaps somebody else might be able to solve the mystery.

I like owls but this just seems wrong.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Things that I did