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 clock

This 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 badger

If 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 you

There 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!

Things! Ep. 3 – Omnibox

Sometimes it takes a single person of extraordinary vision to show the world what it has been lacking, and in a single moment, change everything. Sometimes that unique talent is a leader, who brings peace and harmony to a divided people; sometimes it is a businessman who can build a global corporation based on benevolence and the improvement of human lives.

Sometimes it’s a man called Henry from Oxfordshire who has invented a box that can do, literally, everything.

In the third episode of Things!, Alan Rudge meets that man and his amazing box.

Flaming Horses

You are applying for a job.

There are several other people in line for the position but so far, without realising, you have been the strongest candidate. When the interviewer looks away you quickly wipe the sweat from your brow. Someone has left the heating on; you think it’s a deliberate ploy to put you under pressure.

It all comes down to the last question, which is separated into two parts:

A) You are passing through a popular field. All of a sudden you notice a horse, on fire, charging towards you. You do not have enough time to run away. The flaming horse is going to collide with you unless you do something immediately. You do not have any weapons or tools at your disposal. What do you do?

B) You are passing through an unpopular field. It’s all dirty and marshy. All of a sudden you notice a horse, on fire, charging towards a small group of zombie children, who are also on fire. They are going to collide unless you do something immediately. You do not have any weapons or tools at your disposal. You cannot leave the situation as it is and walk away. What do you do?

Your answers will determine whether or not you get the job.

Think carefully.

Kevindo Menendez & Smoochies Inc.

PRESS RELEASE

LEEDS, UK – Internationally renowned design genius, Kevindo Menendez has today, 16/3/16, finally taken the wraps off his new fashion collection for babies developed closely with much respected manufacturer of fancy goods, Smoochies Inc.

The new range, entitled “Baby Looks Good”, is expected to be available for retail distribution from the beginning of April. The range uses key elements from Menendez’s back catalog, such as the ‘CRAB’ and ‘PENGUIN’ motifs and the now legendary artwork commissioned by PouringBeans for their website.

I am very proud to have been a part of the development of this new range. I have always admired Kevindo’s artwork, I actually have several original pieces in my studio at home, and to be able to bring it to the masses in a range which is durable, absorbent and machine washable is greatly satisfying.

Ian McIver, Managing director of Smoochies Inc.

Huh? I just doodled a crab and this bloke brought me some things with it on. Everyone seems really excited by it so I guess it must be good.

Kevindo Menendez, Design Genius

Retaillers or distributors interested in stocking the range should contact Smoochies Inc Directly via the usual channels, quoting ref: S3LL-M3-CR4BS

Security

These are dangerous times. Terrorism is literally everywhere. Just yesterday I had to take the bins out when the bin bags were only half full because they had terrorists hiding in them. Last Thursday, I went back to a tub of half-eaten strawberry yogurt in the fridge and found that terrorists had eaten the rest of it.

To the untrained eye, everything is normal here in the safe, fairytale world of The Beans. Posts keep appearing, obscure in-jokes keep being mentioned, and everything seems normal.

But everything is not normal.

If you look closely at the most recent comments, you’ll see a theme. You’ll see that they are all by me and Ian. Why? Where is Kev?

The only sensible conclusion is that Kev’s login details have been hacked by terrorists and are now being used to terrorise innocent people. It’s possible that Kev himself has now been infiltrated, and is being used to spread fear and terror. Who knows – it might have been Kev who broke into my fridge and ate my yogurt. I think it probably was. The bastard.

This must stop, and I propose a two-step plan.

The first step is that we must improve our security systems, and for this reason both Ian and myself are being issued with black briefcases containing complicated equipment and wires and flashing LED displays with numbers on them. These form part of a new high-security login system to make sure that our login details are never compromised by the forces of terror, and also look really cool like we’re in a film.

The second step is that we will destroy Kev in a controlled explosion in a field near Bracknell this Friday afternoon. I know this will not be popular, particularly with Kev himself, but I think he would have to agree that it is for the good of the nation.

All those in favour, please raise your hand in the comments section.