How long have you got? If you’ve dropped by for only thirty seconds or so, shirking Excel spreadsheets or whatever it is that people who work for a living do at desks, then you may as well biff off again and come back later. This is a guest blog of epic proportions.
Coming in at a shade under 2000 words, it is indeed the trifle that brings home the bacon, but I’ll give you some advice before you start: pop the kettle on, treat yourself to a Custard Cream and sit down to what is effectively a short story rather than a blog. It’s written by “Dusky”, so-named because she’s one of those creatures hailing from a sand dune somewhere in the Middle East. Enjoy your cuppa and biscuit. Here it is:
I’m Dusky, and I have a friend–I’m not going to tell you his real name because I don’t want to embarrass him–who suffers from chronic flatulence. So when I was at his house the other day presented with the potentially dangerous task of preparing a luncheon of baked beans on toast for two, I was a tad nervous at the prospect of what said beans were going to do his already singsong digestive system…
So, in stepped my trusty goblet of bicarbonate of soda.
Now what, I hear you asking, do farts have to do with bicarbonate of soda? And how do baked beans feature in this strange equation? Well, let me tell you the story…
Myths and Magick
I was bored at home one day and decided to scan the shelves 
of my mother’s library of esoteric lore for something to read. One book immediately caught my eye. It was petite and angular, with a thin red spine that had the come-hither words “BAKING SODA” snaking up the side. Intrigued, I pulled it out and opened a page at random.
The first words that jumped out at me were so full of daring and promise that my hands started to tremble with excitement…Sandwiched between talk of how baking soda can be used to fluff up chocolate chip cookies or annihilate your garden’s ant population, was the claim that it can get rid of the flatulent quality of baked beans, promising wind-free bean consumption for all the family. Yes, even your Great Aunt Mildred who always blames it on the dog.
I felt like Ozymandias and that I had just been given an ancient tablet with some mysterious Atlantean prophecy scrawled on it. I was intrigued, so I read on…
Baking soda, it seems, really is just bursting with magical properties and can be used to make countless household goodies: drain cleaner, deodorant, playdough, bubble bath, organic pesticide and magic inflatable balloons… And these are only a handful of ways you can use the white powdery stuff. If nothing on this list tickles your fancy, fear not, for there are over five hundred more ways you can turn a dash of baking soda into Mary Poppins-inspired magic…
It wasn’t too long before my mind was reeling at the endless possibilities contained in a pinch of this humble substance. I shut the book and put it back on the shelf, its imprint etched firmly in my mind…
The Experiment
I soon forgot about this soul-stirring encounter until I was given the task of preparing the aforementioned baked bean lunch in an unassuming kitchen in East Sussex. I had never tried the supposedly foolproof baking soda/baked bean method before, and it seemed that the opportunity to find out whether it worked or not had presented itself to me on a proverbial silver platter.
Ideally, an experiment such as this should be carried out on someone with the melodious ability to produce wind and, by Jove, if I hadn’t found the perfect guinea pig for the job…
Beans for Two
The clock struck noon and lunch was served in the dining room. Soon Jules’ chompers were busily working away at masticating his Tesco brand baked beans on defrosted toast. “So you’ve added baking soda to the beans, then?” he asked me, in between mouthfuls. “Yes, to see if it really lives up to the claim of being able to remove their flatulent quality… If it works on you, well, then we can all continue to hold out on that pigs-will-fly desire each of us has buried away in our collective unconscious. It’s a primal, Jungian thing, I am told,” I said, patting Jules on the back.
We finished our meals and sat back and waited…
The Carol of the Birds
It didn’t take long for the snaps, crackles and pops to begin their melodic launch from Jules’ arse cheeks. “Maybe it takes a while to start working,” I said, slightly dismayed that my experiment was getting off to rather a bad start… There was a brief lull; all was quiet on the western front, and then more whistles, whizzes, fizzes, rips and ho-hums.
There were long ones, short ones, wet ones –even ones that sounded like there were several being pushed out of his bum at the same time. Music of the Spheres move over, you’ve met your heavenly match…
Speaking of heights…
Some of them came out with such force that it was a wonder he didn’t take off like a human airplane. “If we clear out a runway in your living room, I could power up your 
remote control helicopter and the two of you could go off in a convoy to France,” I quipped.
If Music Be The Food of Love, Play, Play On…
These farts had the astonishing ability to serenade you in every musical genre imaginable. There was the sweet song of crooning lovebirds, the earnest drama of arias being belted out by divas at La Scala and of course, the flatulent fanfare of a New Orleans brass band. Folks, this was musical diversity at its pinnacle and there wasn’t anyone there to enjoy it but me… I wanted to get Simon Cowell on the phone and yell, hurry up and bag him before someone else does! I mean, there are the Bob Dylans and Leona Lewises of this world, but here was someone in a class entirely by himself – a true virtuoso, a musical tour de force and a troubadour to be reckoned with…
Then there’s not forgetting the fado, madrigals, jazzy blues and barbershop quartets I was entertained with all afternoon – and that was just the matinee! At intermission there was an impromptu Gregorian chant concert followed by a smattering of forro tunes and in the evening things got dangerously raucous with a gassy coda of toe-tapping hootenanny followed by some 1960s folk ballads.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing, though, is that none of these farts–for all their musical diversity–seem to smell… In fact, the only types of farts missing from this encyclopaedic repertoire are SBDs and ones that my old school chum Helena used to refer to as “eggy diarrhoea farts”. “I can even do what girls do if I need to and 
discreetly pull apart my bum cheeks to let them out silently if I am in public,” Jules says with an impish grin.
What they lack in aromatic appeal they certainly make up for in tone, texture and dynamics…
Tilting At Windmills
I can see my name in lights now – Simon’s new go-to girl with the uncanny ability to sniff out new talent. But, more importantly, I can see Jules basking in the warm glow of mottled limelight. All the reviews singing his praises are so real that they are almost tangible to me. If I shut my eyes, I can just about make out the written words: … farts capable of hyperbole, of subtlety and of rich melodic nuance…
They have the ability to infuriate, to entertain, to wax poetic… They are at once complex and straightforward… something, something blah, blah, blah… gut-wrenchingly poignant… They are odourless yet full bodied and fruity…blah, blah, blah…A flirtatious interplay of deep, sonorous baritone sumptuously woven in with tremulous tenor notes and a soaring mezzo-soprano…blah, blah, blah dynamics, blah, blah, blah range…something, something, timbre…
I wake up, snapping out of my fanciful reverie, the harsh light of reality hitting me like a sledgehammer –alas, my experiment has f-f-failed.
Winding Down (Ooh, how’s that for a rhyme d’oueil-meets-double entendre…)
Daylight is dimming in the back garden casting a kindly golden gleam on the unwashed pots in the kitchen sink. We’ve had our tea and an After Eight mint and Jules’ arse is slowly but 
surely beginning to quiet down. A ripple here, a flourish there and a final “Bobby dazzler”*[see footnote] ends my experiment, which has been, well, a big fat failure…
I am feeling wistful and crestfallen and I have nothing but the sudsy dead soldiers of dirty cutlery to console me…Where did it all go wrong? Should I have used Heinz Baked Beans instead? Or was I just not liberal enough with the baking soda? The book did say sprinkle sparingly, and so sparingly I sprinkled, as nimble fingered as Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold…
Look on my Works Ye Mighty and Despair
Maybe it was a mistake making a guinea pig out of a man who’s clearly cut out for a gold medal in the flatulence Olympics…? I mean, for him, to fart is to be alive and to be alive is to fart so baking soda or no baking soda, I should honour what New Agers call his “divinity”, that is, his prana and walk away from my defeat with my head held high.
I realise now that my experiment probably lacked the cold, strategic forethought required in most scientific undertakings, but in the light of my new life-affirming revelation does it really matter? The answer of course is no, and it is this that comforts me in the ashes of my failure.
What’s in a Name?
Now I’m sure you are all dying to know who this elusive friend of mine is. Well, mum’s the word, I’m afraid; this is a secret I shall be taking with me to the grave…
Oh all right, I’ll give you a couple of hints: he still listens to cassette tapes, plays the trombone and entertains quixotic fancies of being popular with womenfolk…
If you can guess the identity of “Jules” please submit all answers alon
g with your full name, gender and address to dusky@falafel.com. The competition closes on the evening of the next full moon and the winner will receive a limited edition goblet of Baking Soda with a matching Witch’s Hat/Codpiece and Broom Set worth £150!
Gather Ye Rosebuds, or, So Long but not Farewell
Regular readers of this blog probably come here for their weekly dose of adventure, for the uplifting trucky ditty and for the protagonist’s mythic accounts of fast cars and fast women. The reason I subscribe to Barnaby’s blog of depravity, however, is for the lavatorial humour (how does he come up with some of these things?). His article on Dutch Animal Rodgering had me in stitches.
Yep, I’m like a chick with a dick and rather than recoiling girlishly and shrieking when someone lets rip a corker, I let out a delighted laugh instead. Farts are utterly hilarious as are, indeed, all other “crass” bodily functions… So if you are a girl reading this, why not, rather than wincing the next time someone unleashes a fart, embrace the moment with a boyish sense of joviality and laugh instead –go on, you owe it to yourself to at least try…
To those of you who’d been hoping for highbrow tales of cabbages and courtiers, apologies for being unable to indulge your loftier sensibilities by going down the farts and toilets route instead. Hopefully some invaluable lessons have been learned along the way regarding the use of bicarbonate of soda, this most multi-tasking of multi-taskers, and how you can apply its myriad uses to your own life.
* Slang for a fart that is raspy and tickles the anus when released.
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