Reacquaintance

It’s not too long before the bi-annual Pouring Beans shareholders meeting takes place in Bordon, France. Minutes will be taken, quiches will be shared, and pyjama trousers will be stretched. A fun time will be had by all.

In order to save some time with the introductions I thought it would be beneficial to include some information here so that we can forego the usual icebreakers (I always hated that one where you throw the ball and whoever catches it has to tell the group a personal secret and then do fifty laps of the courtyard) and move straight to the complimentary lunch:

My name is Ian von Drudle-McIver. I was one of the founding members, so I have been with the company for over fifteen years. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the colour of the book that the regulation’s in (we kept it grey).

My day-to-day duties include staring wistfully out of the windows so that photographers can capture my likeness and putting it in leaflets and posters with inspiring messages for the other members of staff, finding anything made of cake and eating it and occasionally holding a cup of coffee and joining other people’s conversations to add the often useful and ultimately timeless response, “I know, right?”

When I am not slaving at the office and in board meetings, I enjoy riding manatees, laughing at belt buckles and pushing tinfoil through random post boxes.

In the next five years, I hope to introduce several changes to make work at the company much more enjoyable. It’s very enjoyable as it is, so what could I possibly want to change? Firstly, I would want every one soap dispenser out of four to dispense chocolate raisins instead of soap. Secondly, it would be hugely beneficial for productivity to have the song ‘We Close our Eyes’ by Go West play all day every day in every part of the office, so much so that you couldn’t escape it anywhere (including the basement). Lastly, every Friday would be ‘bird day’ where staff members can bring their own birds to the office so they can share in the fun. I do have other suggestions, but I wouldn’t want all my secrets disclosed here; I’ve got to keep some jewels to myself.

See you all at the buffet.

Kitchen guide

At the risk of inducing an episode of PTSD in Kev, I’d like to give you a quick rundown of where we are with the kitchen, one week in.

For a week now the living room has included a fridge, a sofa standing on end, a drinks cabinet, a table, a microwave, a kettle and a toaster. All our meals have either been boiled, toasted or microwaved. The kitchen itself has bare walls, a bare concrete floor (now perfectly level), wires sticking out of holes and pipes that go nowhere. The ceiling has one coat of white paint. As I type this a very tall Polish man is whistling and making loud banging noises and there are a range of half-built cabinets scattered around the room. The rest of the house does not bear thinking about.

For your convenience, I have compiled this list of things you might need and where you will find them.

Thing	Where you will find it
Extra large martini/cocktail glasses	Under the radiator in the spare room.
Electric chopper/blender thing	Electrical bit is in a cardboard box underneath two other boxes in the spare room. Blade is in a bag with sharp things that you should avoid putting your hands in. Lid is AWOL.
Candles	In a plastic bag underneath the Uno cards in the fold-down part of the drinks cabinet.
Dining table	In pieces, under a blanket in the spare room, behind the chairs.
Dining room light fitting	Glass shades are under a collection of tea towels on top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. Wires and metal bits and bulbs are casually scattered on top of boxes in the spare room.
Bag of quinces from the bit of our quince tree that hangs over the neighbours’ fence, brought round by the neighbours	Under the Flash Speedmop refills and a recipe book, on the shelf in the utility room next to the recycling.
Jar of ground cinnamon	One is in the bag of herbs, spices, condiments and oils in the spare room. Another one is in the bag of pasta, rice and tins. Another one is in the bag of snacks and biscuits.
Cat bowl, including remnants of cat’s previous meal	Next to the wifi router in the hall, behind several pairs of shoes and some old post.
Skirting boards from the dining room	In the garage, balanced on top of two old pallets and the saddle of a bicycle.
Sultanas	In a drawer in the living room next to the Ryvita and a bottle of maple syrup.

AI Knows you well…

Our robot overlords are coming, its only a matter of time, but they will come. For now though AI is still either used to sort through spreadsheets faster than a human, help robot dogs open a door or for titting about making pictures from text commands.

With that last option in mind, I headed over to a text-to-image AI tool and typed in our usernames, and I think you can see that the AI mind has synthesised us perfectly.

A request for images of “Chris5156” gives us the all familiar images of Chris going about his business as some sort of train, or as we often see him, adorning the cover of some sort of sports magazine.

Searching for dear old “Ian ‘Mac Mac Mac Mac’ McIver” brings us similarly familiar results. We all know Ian is a keen lover of football, ominous framed symbols and his ginger hair is the envy of many.

“Kevil” meanwhile returns results of bizarre bird creatures and bald businessmen… spot on!

Just to round-out the set, I checked in on what the computer brains had to show in its databanks for “Pouring Beans“. I wasn’t disappointed. It nailed the pouring rooms at the back of the beans perfectly, right down to the floating sieve and the denim uniforms…

Shatwell

Look at you with your eyes, your face and your hair. All of that came from someone else, passed onto you like a terrible family heirloom. What you see when you look in the mirror is the equivalent of one of those badly designed porcelain figures that nobody has had the heart to throw away because it’s been in the family for generations. We’re so glad you’re here.

Good news though. The way family trees are these days they stretch far and wide; you may be fortunate enough to have a ‘Shatwell’ in your family.

What is a ‘Shatwell’? I’ve been doing a bit of research because I knew you’d be full of questions:

Belonging to Shatwell [Old English w(i)ella, a spring, the first element may be either old English sceat, a corner, projection or Old English sceatt, a payment, a penny.

I’m none the wiser either.

What if you were walking around the turn of the previous century and you wanted to find a Shatwell? Where would it be best to go? Around this time, you’d be likely to bump into a Shatwell in Cheshire. Remember that the next time you’re time-travelling. Watch out though as according to documentation, 20 of them were found to have criminal records. Make sure you keep a close eye on your pocket watch.

You came here for cold hard facts. Let me hit you with these:

In the United States, it was the 108,734^th most popular name in *checks records* 2010. Wow.
It is the 544,093^rd most common surname in the world.
Shatwell is also one of the most unique last names recorded. That feels a bit like hyperbole though, must be some Shatwells trying to drum up support for themselves.
(this is an actual “fun fact” on a website) The name spelled backwards is ‘Llewtahs’. A random rearrangement of the letters in the name (anagram) will give Leatslwh. How do you pronounce that?

????????????

Exactly. If you are lucky enough to have a ‘Shatwell’ in your family then please ask them to start their own website and collate proper and up-to-date information about their name because it seems as though the internet is quite a ways behind.

Tracking Ian

I’d been wondering where Ian had got to lately. He hadn’t been on the Beans much and there’d been nothing on the Whatsapp group. Turns out he’s gone on holiday to Florida where, by all accounts, he is absolutely tearing the place up.

This lady has been tracking him since Saturday. She wasn’t entirely sure where his holiday would start but she clearly thought Tampa was quite likely. Maybe he was heading for Disneyworld.

Sure enough, a few days later, he’d been pinned down in Orlando.

We all need a nice holiday from time to time. If you’re feeling worn out it can really perk you up. This man thinks it’s done Ian a power of good.

I don’t know when Ian’s going to be back but hopefully we’ll hear from him soon. I imagine right now he’s busy getting autographs from Minnie Mouse and all that. Have fun, Ian! Send us a postcard!

Woodworking: working with wood

My birthday present this year was a two-day workshop using traditional woodworking tools to turn some freshly cut logs into a beautifully finished stool, complete with a hand-carved saddle seat. Yesterday I had the first day of the workshop, which was enormously enjoyable and satisfying. I’m going back next week to finish my masterpiece.

I sustained a number of blisters while using an axe, making these the most manly injuries of my life.

Anyway, I thought you would enjoy learning about some of the traditional woodworking tools that I used to work the wood.

Froe

This is a long blunt metal blade on the bottom of a big stick. You place it on a log and then smash it with a huge wooden club. Several such macho whackings will force it through the log and split it in two. This is highly enjoyable. If hammering your froe isn’t sufficiently noisy you can cast it aside and use an axe and a metal lumphammer instead, which will cause everyone’s ears to ring.

Axe

This is a sharp thing on a stick and you’ve seen one before. By putting a bit of wood on a block, and holding on to it with one hand, you can swing the axe at alarming speed towards the wood, and your fingers, causing bits to splinter off in all directions. If you are the sort of sturdy gung-ho chap who runs a woodworking course, you will do this with unbelievable force and precision, turning a log into a chair leg in a matter of seconds. If you are me you will spend ten minutes ineffectually chipping away at it while giving yourself blisters.

Shaving horse

For obvious reasons the mention of this device terrified me, but once I had been coaxed back into the room I discovered that it is a wooden apparatus, sometimes called a woodland vice, that you sit on. By bracing your feet against a footplate, you pivot a bar down onto your piece of wood, holding it in place while leaving both hands free to tinker with it. The wood can be released, moved and held down again with great speed by using your legs. I much preferred this device to both normal vices and normal horses.

Drawblade

This item has a name in two parts. “Draw” refers to the action of pulling it towards you. It has two handles, so you can grip it in both hands, and you pull it forcefully towards your stomach. “Blade” refers to the fact that, mounted between the handles, is a foot-long very sharp blade which, as mentioned, you are pulling forcefully towards your stomach. You can use this to shave slices off a piece of wood, turning an ineffectually chipped-at log into something resembling a chair leg.

Spokeshave

Once you’ve drawn your drawblade enough, you will have a roughly shaped piece of wood. To finesse its shape you can use a spokeshave, which is a little bit of wood, big enough to grip in both hands, with a razorblade mounted in the bottom. You use it in the same way, but get a much finer slice, enabling precision smoothing. It can also be used across the end grain to produce a surface as smooth as if you’d spent all day sanding it. I achieved a state of zen mindfulness while using this tool.

Adze

These tools vary between terrifying and precise. The axe was, for me, at the terrifying end of the spectrum until I met the adze. It’s like an axe, but with a longer handle, and its blade is curved and at right angles to the handle. You use it to carve curved shapes out of a piece of wood, and you do this by standing on the wood with your legs apart and then swinging the adze, with as much speed and force as you can muster, between your legs. Ideally you will hack lumps out of the wood without damaging your shoes or removing your own toenails.

Also this week, I used a hand drill to put a one-inch drill bit through a solid piece of ash. Next week I will have my first encounter with a travisher, which I expect will be used for extensive amounts of travishing, and I will then form a mortise and tenon joint using means I cannot yet explain.

I will, assuming I am successful, allow you to sit on the stool, and I will repeat to you the story about getting blisters.

Twenty one years on

A year ago, when it was twenty years on from the founding of Zyurisizia, I wrote a post about the fledgling nation that Ian and I helped to birth, and we had a short conversation about what its flag looked like.

My contribution was only that I had “a feeling it involved triangles”. Ian dredged up slightly more detail, recalling “triangles and a red circle, a bit like the Chinese flag”, though in what way that resembled the flag of China, which has no triangles and no red circle, I don’t know. We then recalled that territory was claimed by fastening the flag to the longest pole we could find, and planting that in the ground in various places.

Luckily I have now found my Office Memorabilia CD, so after a year of impatient waiting, you’ll be pleased to know the answer is now with us.

The capital city, which was the Office, was claimed with a hand-drawn flag on a 30cm ruler.

We then moved on to claim the Wildlife Area a few days later, by which point we had a more professional flag on a metre ruler.

I haven’t visited the Scholars Gate housing development to check, but I assume the flag is still prominently flying there somewhere.

For your peace of mind, this is probably all the Zyurisizia nostalgia there is to be had, so next year you’re probably safe from a “twenty two years on” type post. Still, lots of fun was had by all concerned.

‘Iansurance’

Modern life sucks. We all know this and it’s reached the point now where there’s no point saying it because everyone knows it. We all need a little humour in our lives to raise the spirits and keep the home fires burning. Given the recent decline in the state of the country, doctors are prescribing laughter more and more for curing most common ailments. I rubbed a chuckle on a bruise the other day and felt much better.

I have been toying around with ideas for sitcoms for years now. Chris and I even challenged each other to write pilots for sitcoms in unlikely places (remember that?) way way way back in the day. Now that I have taken the leap into a brand new place of employment it’s only right to use my skills to aid the rest of the human race. I need to show the world that even though things are pretty pants right now you can forget all your troubles for around 24/25 minutes each week with my sitcom, ‘Iansurance’.

The main character is some berk called Ian. He works as a service agent at the Clifford Makin Insurance company. He’s on the phone most days and, boy, does he get into some hysterical comical scrapes. The thing is that Ian daydreams so the time between phone calls his mind drifts into bizarre places: sometimes he’s a horse flying through the sky, sometimes he’s a clown handing out leaflets to cats about making sure they have a mouse pension for when they retire and sometimes he imagines that every time he speaks rainbows shoot out of his mouth and they explode into chocolate muffins when they collide with solid objects.

His boss, Gloria Cookiesnatcher, doesn’t know about Ian’s daydreaming and continually praises him as the best on his team even though he’s the most lackadaisical of the bunch. The times when he suddenly wakes up to take a call saying, “Eugh, I didn’t know peach trees were flammable!” are laughed off as part of his quirky personality. Tsk tsk, there goes Ian again, he’s such a zany character.

As a strange twist, the love interest is the coffee machine. Ian loves coffee a lot. It’s what powers him, gets him through the day, fuels his imagination. The machine in the corner of the kitchen area doesn’t have a name but he refers to her as Susan with two e’s i.e., Sueesan. He doesn’t remember why he started calling her that nor why he assigned gender to an inanimate object. Ian professes his love to Susan each and every morning for handing him the wake-up juice. She responds by handing him said wake-up juice.

We’ll fill the rest of the roster with some wacky office types, a snidely cleaner, a religious man, two cats that we can hear the thoughts of and, I don’t know, a wise old woman who lives in a cupboard.

I am in the process of writing the first few scripts and expect a lot of attention when I’m done. Best jump on the golden gravy train trip now, guys.