Things! Ep. 4 – Petrol PocketsAround the world, every single day, remarkable people are creating remarkable new things, making their ideas and innovations a reality. And since the start of 2016, Pouring Beans Productions has been sending its reporters out to meet some of those people and catch a glimpse of the exciting inventions that are in development.
In this episode of Things!, Dougie McLaughten meets a man from Banbury who hopes to revolutionise the way we buy petrol and other inflammable spirits.
Chris’ New Favourite Song – ‘Broiler’In ancient Latin a ‘broiler’ is a broken boiler. So many people have been brought to their knees because of a lack of hot water.
In accordance with Beans law, so it was requested that a song be written to accompany Christopher’s anguish at no longer being a Big Man (TM) and having to resume his role originally handed to him in a sock over a year ago.
I was the person handed that task and I am the one who has furiously sculpted the song that lays before you. There is no joy to be had in this post. If you are looking for sunshine and pickles then I would suggest you look elsewhere. Only doom and gloom permeate this blackened tune.
If only the National Whinge Line was still up and running. Keep your next of kin on speed dial.
Broiler
It was a Tuesday night,
I wasn’t feeling alright.
I knew I’d felt better,
As I clung to my sweater.
Inclement weather in May,
Added to my disarray.
Kettles wearing a frown,
My boilers broken down.
I think it’s the flue,
Problems, I’ve got a few.
The warranty’s out of date,
Got there two days too late.
Now that the meters teasing,
Everything’s slowly freezing.
Oh, there is just no pleasing,
Shunt’ be this cold this season.
(Instrumental break)
Glow worm, Valliant, Worcester Bosch
So, I am left this way,
In this cool month of May.
Engineer can’t come by
‘Til 3pm next Fri.
Over a week like this?
Fiddlesticks, ladles and whisks!
Combi’s left me so blue,
Tell me, what can I do?
Diddle diddle dee dum de dum de babaaaa badum
I hope this is sufficient for everyone’s purposes. Whilst this tale may not be true, it easily could have been.
Christening: Order of ServiceYork Minster, Deangate, York, YO8 7HH – Monday 18 April 2016
Hymn: O Lord You Are Definitely Real And We Believe In You
The Archbishop of York to read from the Book of Revelations, chapter 12 verse 18, “The Unwavering Faith of the Hills”
Hymn: Let This Child Be Raised Unto God
oOo
Bible reading by the father of the child, Mr Chang, from the Book of Lego, chapter 8 verse 66, “Silence Thee Atheist Scum, for Jesus is my Wingman”
Deployment of Changlet into the font for the Solemn Holy Dunking
Hymn: Take Thee This Freshly Moistened Child And Send Him To Sunday School
Sermon by the Archbishop of York: the tribulations of St. Menendez The Faithful in the Replacement of the Taps
oOo
Prayer, led by Changlet himself, who has been provided with a text-to-speech system and a loudspeaker.
Changlet: We Need Three
Congregation: We Are Three
All: Amen
Hymn: I Just Got My Scout Badge For Praying Lots
Organ recital of Handel’s “Heretic Waltz” as congregation departs
oOo
Sausage rolls and Vimto will be served in the Pig and Whistle function room from 15:00.
Modern Life is ConfusingSo… there’s nothing quite like the English language. It can manipulated and distorted in so many ways that what it resembles now is completely different to how it was a hundred, fifty, even twenty years ago.
That said, sometimes innovation does not happen overnight. You have to allow it to simmer for a while. It will bubble to the surface to get your attention when it is ready to do so. Don’t rush it, for the love of Buster Keaton! I was recently scouring the internet to look for a birthday present for my godson and instead stumbled over this.
Ladies and gentleman, let me present you with a link to the Animal Pig:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013PX3XYI
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Animal Pig you should know two important things:
Note how the two facts are very similar but also very different at the same time. I had gone looking for a present and alternatively received an education in how to refer to modern animals.
Now when I am on my way to a farm I can look forward to seeing the Animal Cows, the Animal Chickens and the Animal Goats. If I’m heading to a zoo I can feast my eyes upon the Animal Elephants, the Animal Giraffes and possibly, if they’re not too busy, the Animal Tigers.
I’m already working on a FUN leaflet for my nieces to explain that we’ve been doing nature all wrong and that we have to shift with the times otherwise we’ll just look simple.
In one sense, why did no-one tell me this sooner?! In another, awww, pigs.
Remembering is Fun – ‘Kevin’s Favourite Song’Due to a distinct absence of Kevin and Kevin-based products it now falls upon Chris and myself to fill in the blanks. I’m not very good at grooming poodles or doing up houses so this will be a lengthy and painful process.
I’m also really rank at doing IT. I did an IT once and the whole office didn’t recover for six weeks. I don’t get to do an IT anymore.
Instead let’s hark back to a time before all of this guff. A more simple time when I would spend most weekends levelling up my characters on ‘Secret of Mana’ on the SNES and crying about girls, or a lack thereof. Kevin, meanwhile, was off living it up big style. Not only had he managed to do his face in on a holiday to Greece with Tom Cruise lookalike and badger enthusiast Mr T Matthews, but he also was holding down a sweet job in Monkey Maze and beating up crims as his crime fighting alter ego, The Malevolent Pen.
With all of this going on you’d think he wouldn’t had had time to keep up with the latest fashions, the hottest beats, the sweetest sounds. Well you’d be wrong. Many a time did I go round to his house to find him pulling shapes to THE song of 2002:
He played it constantly. This was his jam and nobody else’s, and if they tried to make it their jam he threw them into a canal. I saw him do it; it was brutal.
There was a time where each time I would call him he’d be sat in a car outside DJ Luck and MC Neat’s recording studio in the hope of catching them and getting them to sign his test vinyl pressing of the song.
I know there will be a large pool of people who won’t believe this because after his endless posts about Status Quo it’s hard to imagine him not wearing a pair of jeans and a ponytail and being chased around by a shit Simon Pegg double. Yet, with my hand on my heart and my leg in the furnace, I can tell no lie.
I wonder if he still plays it now, in the dark, quietly, as his child sleeps. One day Tiny Mountain might wake up as the sun gently caresses his face and he’ll turn to Kevin and his first word will be, “Irie!”
I hope so, guys, I really hope so.
Turning back the clockThis week I’ve left behind the glamorous world I have occupied for the last year and returned to my old job. Those of you with long memories will recall that it principally involves pushing buttons when foreign people point at me.
There have been several effects as a result of this change.
I find myself catapulted back into a life I last inhabited in January 2015. We all remember that month and everything that happened in it. For me, Uptown Funk is still at the top of the charts and Lithuania has only just adopted the Euro. I won’t actually buy the blue and green striped jumper I’m currently wearing for another ten months. I am living in the past.
I am left with a sense of malaise, which comes from the feeling that my career is moving backwards and not forward, and from the changes that have happened to my old job in my absence. I am also getting re-acquainted with many of my old colleagues which involves talking to people. I don’t like talking to people.
Others have been affected too. My beloved Crab Mug, once the darling of a major broadcaster’s master control room, has returned to my flat, where it feels deflated and redundant, but conversely my white coffee cup (ceramic with silicone lid and grip, in a design that makes it look like a disposable cup from a coffee shop) has been liberated from my locker, which had been shut for the last 14 months, and is enjoying something of a renaissance.
This has been a difficult transition for me, one whose effects will be felt through my life, like aftershocks from some sort of career-based earthquake, for months to come. Some of the results are positive and others are negative.
But one thing is for sure. Everyone I know will have to put up with me complaining about it for the forseeable future, and in that sense, they may be the real losers here.
Things Euston Square Station is not, No. 71: a badgerIf you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, you’ll have seen that (despite the previous 70 episodes in this informative series) there is still huge uncertainty among the British public about whether Euston Square Station is or is not certain things.
We have, of course, ruled out a range of things that Euston Square Station might have been in previous episodes, including a tray of condiments and relishes, Weston-Super-Mare, a pencil sharpener and a slightly aggravated North American Peregrine Falcon. But one question continues to vex the nation: is Euston Square Station a badger?
Thankfully, we are able to put this question to rest once and for all. A visit to the station itself, and close inspection of the station sign, reveals the answer.
Euston Square Station is not a badger.
If you’re unsure whether or not Euston Square Station is or is not something, you can write to this address for a factsheet:
Things Euston Square Station Is Not
Room 4000
PBP Television Centre
Pouring Beans
The Internet
A Big THANK youThere are a lot of heroes that never receive the recognition they deserve. They wander on, still doing their best, still going above and beyond the expectations of their peers and yet their trophy cabinet remains empty. It’s not as if they do what they do for the silverware though; they do it because nobody else can.
I would like to offer a warm slightly moist hug to those people and things. I open up my arms and welcome them into the happiness of my bosom, sometimes with a sympathetic tap to the head and a quiet word in their ear.
For there are many who don’t realise that without them the world would be a much darker place. I hope you all will join hands and put down your slush puppies, in that order, to slap a high five in the general direction of…
ELBOWS!