Fame at last

My job sometimes involves me being awake in the middle of the night and doing strange things.

One strange thing I’ve had to do lately is find ways of making phone calls to Australia on behalf of some people at the other end of the country. Normally, you see, OJ Borg does the overnight show on the wireless, and he has a mobile phone in Australia that he rings every day at 2.15am. He then has a chat with whoever answers it, and he asks them to give it to another random Australian in time for the next show. Lately, though, his phone system has not been allowing him to call Australia, which is a real disadvantage for a feature of this kind.

Our involvement in this madness – making phone calls to Australia in the middle of the night – has escalated steadily over the last month until it reached a point where they wanted to explain what was going on to their audience. So I was asked if I would mind explaining.

I didn’t mind, though I was very tired and not sure I was making much sense. That is why this happened.

Then, half an hour later, it was time to make the call. I didn’t say a lot because it wasn’t connecting and I was busy pressing buttons and checking things because I was very worried I’d done something wrong, but I hadn’t, it was just that the mobile phone in Australia had no signal.

My agent will handle all requests for signed photos. Also, I am now taking bookings for the panto season.

Not Kev

A little while ago, in the comments thread of another post, Ian and I were musing about how we could get more material from Kev on the Beans, and Ian suggested we use AI to churn out some generic Kev-like material for a new “Not Kev” account.

Unfortunately there just isn’t enough genuine Kev blog material to feed in to an AI to teach it what it should be writing, so I suggested padding it out with a load of Jilly Cooper novels.

Anyway, long story short, I got ChatGPT to write us some “Not Kev” blog posts and, while they have turned out with a fairly heavy Jilly Cooper influence, they’re still basically decent enough to be posted under Kev’s name without anyone noticing the difference.

I’ve actually got three of these ready to go, but I think this is the best one.

Get in my mouth

Have snacks, will travel.

Having recently been on an excursion to the Czech Republic, there were lots of opportunities to fill my face with various offerings. Almost on every corner was a vendor or some kind of business selling the local delicacy; the chimney cake (or ‘Kürt?skalács’ as Google reliably informs me). It’s a sweetened flaky pastry baked around these hot rods making a little cocoon of joy. You then get to choose what you stuff into the aforementioned cocoon and the most popular choices were cream and strawberries, ice cream and strawberries, strawberries, ice cream, cream, some kind of minty option and any other variation I haven’t mentioned yet. They were/are delicious.

I am here though to speak about another “taste sensation” that came across my way whilst lumbering around in shops. Tell me, have you ever heard of a Corny Big?

Only the cool people call them ‘Corny B’.

No, I hadn’t either up until recently. It is best described as a cereal bar with the minutest of nutritional value, acres of sugar, possibly a full bag per bar, and the kind of chemical taste that you would need three goes from a mouthwash to get rid of. They were/are “delicious”.

I filled up part of the suitcase with a small selection to take back. I didn’t even get all the different flavours too as there were more hiding in other establishments that we were dawdling about in when waiting for a reservation at a restaurant. What stopped me from getting more? I do have some self-restraint sometimes I’ll have you know (someone told me not to go overboard…).

I only hope that there is a relatively cost-effective way of getting them to the UK so I can indulge some more.

Book surprise

Surprises, eh? Lovely stuff. They come in all shapes and sizes from a fist in the mouth to a great big cake shaped like Vince Vaughan. What you do for your surprise is up to you, or not as the case may be. If you want a specific surprise you have to be very direct to the person you want the surprise to be… ach, I’m not making much sense. It’s too early for thinking.

When I returned from work earlier on this week I was greeted with a mysterious parcel through my letterbox. I knew three things:

The item was thin (the packaging was super floppy)
The item was from Amazon.
I hadn’t ordered anything recently from Amazon.

I was completely surprised then to know that I was now in the possession of ‘Bedtime for the Burpee Bears’ by thoroughly nice person but also walking charisma vacuum Joe Wicks. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but as I am about to go on holiday it would make sense to take it with me as a bit of light reading on the plane or in the hotel room. It’s an epic, 12 or 13 pages long, with additional exercise and recipe ideas which are, “perfect for sharing.” If anybody needs these things you know where to find me.

The mystery therefore stems from the question of whom would send me such a thing, who would be generous enough to send such a beautiful thing, and only two groups of people come to mind: my brother and my mischievous nieces, who are the most likely candidates, and Kevin and wor Ted.

I guess we’ll never know. I’m off to make a sunshine smoothie to wash down the banana pancakes.

Do I do the burpees before or after the food?

Where’s sodding Joe Wicks when you need him?

[redacted]

Four Word Reviews: Funky Dory

You know how, occasionally, something you’ve never experienced before is somehow just what you expected? That is how I felt when Rachel Stevens’ debut solo album, Funky Dory, went into my CD player. I more or less remembered the lead single, Sweet Dreams My LA Ex, but apart from that the main thing I knew is that it was a solo album from the best one out of S Club 7. Rachel Stevens evidently wanted to sound a bit more grown up now that she had thrown off the shackles of the other S Club 6, and it was 2003. Put those things together and you’ve got exactly what this sounds like.

A terrible goodbye

I don’t check the undertaker’s window very often, which means I don’t really keep myself abreast of all the latest undertaking fashions. That’s on me. It’s my problem and I’m doing what I can to address it.

Recently I paused at the window of an undertaker in Petersfield – a wealthy market town in the Hampshire countryside, so not exactly the haunt of the trashy or the tasteless. I expected that what I’d see through the window would all be sombre and reverent. But no: undertaking fashions have moved on, and I have been left behind. It turns out that even in the deeply traditional home counties countryside, picture coffins are now a thing. They had a window full of them.

Cardboard picture coffins.

Emergency bean grab warning

I don’t want anyone to be alarmed by what is about to happen.

Several terrible things have happened lately, you see. One is that I haven’t been able to review the album Funky Dory by Rachel Stevens because the only CD player in the house is a portable drive that connects to my laptop by USB, and my laptop is from the future so its USB ports are all the wrong shape, and I have somehow managed to lose all the adapters I ever owned. Some new adapters arrived yesterday.

Another terrible thing was waking up this morning, looking at the calendar, and realising that February only has 28 days. I thought it was probably around the 22nd anyway, which it isn’t, but the shortness of the month leaves me with only today to make another three posts if I’m going to maintain my years-long streak of full bean counts.

Anyway, this post is here to give you fair warning that it’s going to be a bumpy ride today, with new posts landing on a very tight schedule as I try to hit the full four posts for this month. (This post is also here to count as one of the four.) Good luck everybody.