Avatar Dual life

I couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t even that funny but for some reason there I was, stifling my laughter in the corner of a Norwegian supermarket in the sweet aisle.

I was deliberately on the lookout for products that had unusual or silly names because I’m that kind of person. I take a look at the beautiful scenery, soak in the culture, sample the local delicacies and then push everyone out the way in the hope of finding a t*tbar or a c*ck pellet for a cheap laugh. You can judge me all you want.

We had already gazed longingly at the huge waterfall at the top of the hill and taken a multitude of photographs so it was time to see what other delights were available in this tiny village. The bank had been turned into a tourist shop, one of about half a dozen within the vicinity, and you could tell this because the store clerk kept disappearing behind the door of a massive safe for further stock. It was the only time it rained whilst we were away so the local swimming area was mostly abandoned apart from a couple of thrill-seeking nutters who had bothered to bring their swimwear.

The food shops and convenience stores were a bit of an eye-opener. With one product it explained just how wide the gap is between the UK’s pound and Norway’s Krone. A box of Pound shop, Christmas-only, I’ve-never-seen-anyone- eating-these-before-in-my-life ‘Toffifee’ was 73.90 Krone or £5.53. Imagine being so desperate for ‘Toffifee’ and having to spend over a fiver for the privilege; let’s hope it never happens to you. Further into the aisle I went and there I found a box of sweets with a friendly bear on the front.

The Bjornar Sota (sweet bear) is a loving, caring kind of bear and you can tell this in the way he gently caresses the sweets in his furry bear hands. Is he planning on eating them? Probably not, he’s too lovely for that. He’ll be tucking them up in bed and popping on a night light before quietly placing mugs of hot cocoa on the bedside tables for them.

The Bjornar sura though (sour bear) is a tired, grouchy old Grinch-esque character who doesn’t want to share his sweets with you or anyone you know, so don’t even think about it, sunshine. He’s clinging onto that confectionary for dear life (the expression on the bear’s face is priceless) and no matter how nice you are to him, he will not let go. He’s sour about you, me and everyone else in the world.

Are the sweet bear and the sour bear the same bear? Does he lose his rag and transform into his nemesis, his Mr Hyde? Are the two bears part of the balancing act the universe carries out so gracefully to ensure life can exist? You’re asking the wrong person so don’t even bother. All I know is that, more than ever, we all should be a bit more bjornar sota than bjornar sura.

Avatar Where has Kev been?

You know the deal, I disappear for a while, then I come back full of beans then disappear again. Its a story as old as time. Well this time you may be forgive for thinking that I’d just been too busy doing a masters degree or looking after kids or some other made up nonsense, well no. Not this time.

For the last 5 and a bit months I have in fact been trapped down the character hatch. I know, I know, you’ve both told me to leave it shut, but sometimes the curiosity gets too much for me.

Now those of you with a keen memory may remember the last time I went down there, got stuck and was abandoned by Ian who was too busy demanding ham I had no means to provide. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but no. I opened the hatch (with a pack of ham in my bag just in case) and sank down into the Old Beans.

I spent a few hours wandering through the ornamental gardens, had a picnic by the Zorse monument and whiled away another hour or two doing a sketch of the bell tower in charcoal. The tower’s looking in quite bad shape these days, and you can just make out the corpse of a recently deceased zorse leaning against a wall.

Anyhow, I was just about to come back home when I heard that sound… you know the one… The sound of moody guitars, breaking glass and arty poetry that could only mean… Pete Doherty. He spotted me immediately, he had the mad faraway glint in his eye of a man who’d been forced to exclusively eat zorse meat for 13 years, and he was pissed. In both senses. I think he’d worked out how to distill zorse piss into a kind of hooch. Anyway after chasing me round the great hall, the gardens, across the old Loinsford campus and back to the clock tower he eventually caught me and pressganged me into forming a new band with him and doing a tour of the forbidden lands, (the Cockall Archives, the Saint Kingdom and the Savannah of in-jokes).

The band was just us two, and all I could play was the recorder and the demo button on the keyboard. It was awful. Pete wrote some witty satirical lyrics about Ian’s love of ham and the fall of Chris Industries, and off we went. We played 700 gigs, mostly to empty rooms. Occasionally the zorses would come by, and then quickly leave, but mostly to empty rooms.

For whatever reason, when we returned, Doherty was sated. His anger subsided, the punching stopped and he just wandered off into the mist surrounding in the Loosh Vestibule. I was free. I made my escape and resealed the hatch. I’ve learned my lesson (for now), and I’m back. Hopefully.

Avatar 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.

Avatar Disappointment squared

What does disappointment look like to you? Is it a flaccid (easy now) aubergine that hasn’t managed to grow fully in your allotment? Is it a shiny new 50p coin with a huge dent in the edge? Is it learning that Claire Richards from Steps is coming back with a new solo album? It comes in many shapes and forms and sadly there is no escaping the silky, wet glove that is disappointment.

I recently went on a ship and sailed to a different part of the world. It was excellent all the time (whispers, “all the time”) and even though I must have eaten twice my weight in steak and burgers a good holiday was had by all. The ship was swimming in luxury. If you wanted to sit in a hot tub all day sipping champagne and eating tiny desserts you could. If you wanted to go to their cinema and watch four films back to back you could. If you wanted to watch a questionable stage production by one time flatmate of Robbie Williams, Jonathan Wilkes, then you could (the only time we went to the theatre was on the last day when we were leaving and there was no more time for japes).

Families with children were also catered for on a higher level. In addition to the various play rooms and activities there were pools, swimming pools, pools with pizza stations next to them and some kind of sports facility on the very top deck. I would have investigated however we all know I am allergic to 85% of sports in the general population. Did I mention the pools? They even had a night time nursery service so if you wanted to leave little Billy with a responsible adult so you could go get shit-faced in the bar and then return around 1am to pick him up then you could. You really, really could.

As two adults with no small people there was little chance that we could take advantage of any of these facilities. Not that we wanted to but, hey, nobody likes being left out. When the holiday was being booked there was the hint made by the company that some celebrities who would be onboard for a meet and greet. I heard ‘Wallace’ and ‘Gromit’ and I knew that I had to get involved in this kind of action. For four days there was no mention of them anywhere in the leaflets they left outside your day to inform you about the daily activities going on. Nothing whatsoever. Finally on Wednesday morning, cowering towards the bottom and wedged between something called ‘Jukebox Hero’ and ‘Pilates’, was the following:

“Wallace & Gromit Special Appearance – A special appearance from Wallace and Gromit. Come and say hello to the cheese-loving inventor and his faithful four-legged friend.”

We had to go. There was no way we could miss such an event as this. The queue was very long and started snaking through the whole of the atrium; clearly this was a big event for all. We decided to keep back and watch from afar rather than getting too close. Our location meant we could see everything. Like a couple of divas they were ten minutes late. What then happened can only be… well it needs… look at the damn photo:

Not even two people in suits. We’ve got a fully-sized Wallace and a tiny Gromit that he can fully pick up with one hand, no doubt sewn to his hand because he never put him down. I don’t know if the organisers of this even have ever seen ‘Wallace and Gromit’ but they’re fairly even in height due to the latter walking on his hind legs for a lot of the time. The kids that were hugging and posing for photos were fine with the arrangement; not a single one asked to speak to the manager or had some quiet words with a member of staff. It was clear that we were in the minority so we slipped away and discussed our respective disappointment over coffee and cake.

Avatar Valerie

Being an irredeemable transport geek, I follow several blogs and social media accounts about both roads and public transport. 

One of them recently linked me to an article about a new scheme on the Washington DC Metro system, where indicator lights are being installed outside some stations that tell bus drivers to wait. The idea is that buses will wait when a train has just come in, so people can make the connection from a train to a bus instead of emerging from the station to see their bus already driving away. It seems like quite a nice idea. 

Anyway, I’m not writing this because I think you need to know about innovations in multimodal transport integration in the District of Colombia.

I’m writing this because the news article I was linked to is written by someone called Valerie Bonk.

That’s all. As you were.

Avatar 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.