Can 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.
Leave me be
Didn’t we already go through this, Chris?
I feel as though I’m repeating myself. It would take too long to go through the website to find the post I’m referring to but I specifically remember when you did this previously asking you to stop with this nonsense and yet when I was looking through my junk emails last week, what do you think I found?
There you were, nestled lovingly between some other guff of the highest order. Do I want my free Elvis Presley ’68 coin? No thanks. Do I want a loan of £5,000.00 from someone who couldn’t even get past the spam filter in my inbox? Definitely not. You’ve got something very important to tell me. Something very important is going to happen to…
To you, Siobhan. You can’t even get my name right. How long have we been friends? It’s not the longest name to remember. Three letters and you’re done unlike your full name which is a whopping eleven letters. Do you see me complaining every time I have to write out a card to you? That is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I am not a petty man though so I am willing to let these matters slide. Let me put all of my grief to one side and view with a fresh pair of eyes (and I do have a fresh pair of viewing eyes, they were needed after viewing so much this year so far, the most viewing I’ve done since 2020) the wonders that you have in store for me. It states that something very important is going to happen to me in this…
Autumn 2022. Are you joking? What do you think you’re playing at, sunshine? Are you telling me that your email sent in April 2023 about the magic of Autumn 2022 is supposed to be legit? I gave you the benefit of the doubt and now I’m not sure what kind of sick person you really are. On the surface it’s all wood smothering and horse bothering, a quaint village life with cups of tea and otter sharpening, but underneath that is the kind of repugnant filth that only the Daily Mail would care for.
You make me sick, sir.
Newsboost – Mash gets a helping hand
Breaking news!
The push for mash has reached a new level of excitement today as Aston Villa football club announced that mash would be their new sponsor for the 2023/24 season.
Current sponsor BK8 were left “baffled” at the prospect of being dropped for a popular potato-based food product. It seems as though despite their initial talks to continue for the next three years, Aston Villa manager Unai Emery decided to opt for the underdog after revealing he has a fondness for mash in a recent interview earlier this year.
In the January 2023 edition of GQ magazine, Mr Emery said, “I love it, I love the taste and the texture, the different ways you can season and flavour it, the way it looks on your plate after a hard day’s training, the fact that you can shape it into anything you want. It is such a versatile thing that I insist on mash at least three or four times a week and my wife knows that if I have had a difficult day then mash is the one thing that will bring a smile to my face.”
The British Mash Council (BMC) had this to say about the recent development.
“I am not surprised in the slightest,” said head council member Kevin Hill, “mash has always been popular but it’s time to step it up to the next level. Knowing that every week the good word of mash will be seen on millions of TV sets, seen my millions of eyes, brings joy to all of our hearts. Mr Emery has also expressed an interest in serving mash at the home games and who are we to argue with someone with great taste?”
When asked about the rumours of changing the team’s name to Mashton Villa, both Unai Emery and the British Mash Council responded with a firm, “no comment.” Only time will tell if further changes are afoot for this historic moment in football and mash history.
The last moment of March
This is what you get for posting in the last hours of the month.
Oh, sure, we’ve all done it. You think you’ve got a few more days to make another post, and then wham! It’s the 31st already and the minutes are running out. It’s like Geoffrey Chaucer himself put it: the Bean Counter waits for no man.
Anyway, I felt like I was on safe ground. The one year anniversary of the last podcast post had been and gone, and up my sleeve I had a nice little routine to post. It was going to be a transcript of a “missing” podcast episode. Stage directions indicating scuffling noises and someone eating something crinkly, a false start to asking a question, someone mishearing something. The subject would be along the lines of “what’s the longest you’ve had to wait for the next episode of something?”.
Anyway, I hadn’t written it yet, but in preparation I listened to Gravestones on my way home from work. That would be about two hours ago. In the intervening two hours, Kev has only gone and put another podcast up, hasn’t he? Unbelievable.
So the wind has been comprehensively extracted from my sails. Never mind. There’s four minutes of March left, so I will change course quite abruptly. It’s been a fairly middling day at the end of a fairly rough week, and this made me laugh. Let’s all watch this. Here’s to better times, and silliness, and listening to a new podcast episode on the way to work tomorrow. Thanks Kev. Even if it threw a spanner right in my stupid works.
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
Please note (a rebuttal)
Hello patrons of ‘Sleazy like a Sunday Morning’ (Nantwich).
We would like to thank you for your years, months, weeks or even minutes of patronage. Every time you walk through that door you help me and the girls out such a great deal.
You may or may not be aware that we have recently had a refurbishment and changed certain parts of the club to bring everything more up to date, an aesthetic sheen that hasn’t been seen since the turn of the century. I loved the previous look but I wanted to show a different side to Sleazy’s. After a few meetings with the business partners we decided on two very different looks: one that was modern, sleek and sexy and the other that was sexy, old, and gothic.
The dancefloor and booths are still there, you need not worry. They have been deep-cleaned and bleached to within an inch of their lives. Voice-activated sensors have been added to the toilets so when you say, “flush” the urinals will flush. The bar stools have had a new height of seat added to them (big high!) for those who are vertically-challenged.
The extension at the back, however, is where the temperature has really been cranked up. Have you ever had fantasies about being a knight, a jester or even a king in medieval England? Now you can indulge as much as you want in ‘Ye B-olde England’, the sexiest thing to come out of Nantwich since Thea Gilmore started writing music. We have everything: ale, shouting, stripping, girls, mead, laughter, outfits, dysentery, ornamental owls, women, private parties, stocks and much, much more. If you really want to prove your worth then you need to pick up your sword (not a euphemism) and try to slay the Slaggon™, a mechanical dragon who is giving out everything as long as the price is right. I have built everything myself and I stand by my efforts and the choice of my customers to do what they like (within reason) for a reasonable price.
What I will not stand for though is theft. I have recently discovered that the sign for our new event has been stolen by one of those themed restaurants in the neighbouring town of Crewe. They deliberately took our sign, knowing that it was the wrong one, to drum up interest for their business. They made up some phoney baloney story about being sent the wrong sign to curry favour and get more punters through the door. I hear that they’re doing a roaring trade as a result of this. To begin with I was nice about it and requested the sign be returned only to be met with indifference and mild threats.
The Slaggon™ does exist, and she is ready to take you on whenever you’re ready, but only at my establishment. I want you to know that personally, therefore I take the time to reiterate the following:
- You can hire the Slaggon™.
- You can ride the Slaggon™.
- You can take the Slaggon™ out to your uncle’s pub, which is only a few miles away, and do what you like as long as you pay the dry cleaning fee afterwards.
The sign is yet to be returned. For now let us all have a drink, maybe a dance, and hope that it will be returned. It is, after all, the principle of the matter more than anything else. Cheers!
Sharkitect
I had a vision last night. It was clear and it was pure.
As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I imagined a world where things were made from sharks. Not from shark meat or shark skin or anything weird like that, no no, everything is made from sharks. Buildings built from sharks, stacked metres high, riding up into the sky and beyond. Cars made from sharks where drivers wrap a luxurious shark tongue seatbelt around themselves and pull away in the latest Ford SHARK, a marked improvement from the previous year’s model, the Ford Shark.
Who would build these marvellous machines and inventions? Who would have the skills with which to satisfy the demands of the general public? I would be their saviour. I would be their sharkitect.
How gutted was I then when I looked into the matter and discovered that the majority of sharks are currently endangered? There’s not enough of them to build anything with. If I so much as tried to stack a few to make a shopping trolley the WWF would come down on me harder than an elephant after a long day at the office. My dream was in tatters before it had even got off the ground.
The sharkitect must now only live on as a theoretical job. If someone wants a creche made out of sharks I could design them something funky on a computer, on a piece of paper maybe, and that is all. The chances of finding someone who is willing to pay for this nonsense is unlikely.
I didn’t want to kill sharks. I didn’t want to hurt them. I wanted to turn them from something thrilling and amazing into something beautiful, even more thrilling, even more amazing.