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Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And yeah, what else do I normally say? Anything else? Yeah, that's about it.
And I hope you're keeping well and that doesn't even sound sincere, does it? That sounded so uninteresting when I said that. Yeah, I hope you're all keeping well. So how are you today? Yeah, I clearly didn't want an answer to that.
I had no interest in the answer. No, genuinely, how are you all? I hope you're okay. No, I do.
I do. I hope you're well. Oh, I'm no good at doing sincerity.
Oh dear. One banana, two banana, three banana, four, five banana, six banana, seven banana more. So what's new, pussycat? Oh man, man, man, man.
Still uploading the recordings onto my website. Still uploading them all day today, all day yesterday, all day the day before, all day the day before that. I'm getting there.
I'm just about getting there. All the sleep hypnosis weekly are now uploaded and all the stress hypnosis for stress are uploaded. So they're all on the website.
I've got 200 of the let me bore you to sleep ones uploaded and 110 deep sleep whisper uploaded. So I've still got about 100 of the deep sleep to do and 180 odd let me bore you to sleep ones to upload. And then it'll be, well, that phase, that phase will be completed.
There is more to do. I don't know why. Why do I put myself through it? I'm just re-undoing or redoing what I've done or redone or not done before.
It made sense somehow in my brain when I said that. And now I've got an additional, it's not a problem, but it's an issue with Andre. He's really, really hyperactive at the moment.
I'm struggling to do the deep sleep whisper sessions because whenever I close the door, he starts scratching at it. And in previous weeks, I've managed to close the door when he's asleep and he doesn't even notice. I can't move without him seem to be aware that I've stood up or gone into the bathroom or the kitchen and he follows me.
So I don't know, he's been scratching at the front door even. Is it 19 minutes past four in the morning now? An hour ago, he was scratching at the door. So now I'm thinking I'm going to get complaints from the neighbors because it does echo.
It's an echoey hallway. There's a chance that someone might complain to the council. So I hope not, but it just puts me a little bit on tender hooks.
And I've never, you could listen to every single recording I've ever made. I've never used that phrase before. The term tender hooks, never, guarantee you, never, because I don't use that term.
I'm all on tender hooks. I've never used that before. Not recording, I might have done in speech, but probably not for the last 20 years.
Yeah, pretty sure. How would you know every single sentence you've ever said? I just know that I haven't used it. I've got a friend who uses terms and words that generally people don't use.
And he acts as if it's normal speech. And there are thousands and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of words, let's say thousands, that we could use instead of normal, plain speaking. I choose plain speaking.
And the reason for that, I think, is because I don't know what the other words are. That's really, it's, I think sometimes I can, it's like I can understand, like if I read a word in a sentence, or if I hear someone say a word, I can understand it. But I don't use those words myself.
And I think part of the, I think, I think it must be just because I was such a, such a reader when I was, you know, all through my life. So if you read a word in a sentence, quite often the word makes sense, because the rest of the sentence explains what the word meant. And if the sentence is in doesn't explain what the word meant, then perhaps the sentence before, the sentence after, or perhaps the paragraph, or maybe the entire page together, explains what that word meant.
Yeah, perhaps. So I'd like to, yeah, I just very, I do wonder sometimes, like, how can I make recordings last for hours, over an hour, you know, hour and a half, sometimes two hours sometimes, and not use any, I don't know, I was gonna say, big words, or complicated words, or intellectual, or, you know, any, anything that makes me sound clever. And, you know, I think anyone who listens to me can agree that I've never, I've never ever sounded clever.
I'm very good at not sounding clever. I'm an expert at that. It's a fine art.
I've got it down pat. Again, I've never, ever used the term got it down pat, probably ever in, yeah, I can't think I've ever said it out loud either. It's the first time.
So I can see where this recording, this recording is going. I can see a little pattern growing. I see a development there somehow, and expand, and expand.
So I'm tickling myself. I'm not literally tickling myself. I'm not like tickling under my own armpits, because that would be weird.
But I find it hard to tickle myself. Like if you was here, and you were tickling me, let's say, and I'll be, oh, if I try and do it to myself, it's just, it just doesn't work. Because there has to be that degree of tension, you know, when you're kind of tensing up.
And you can't push yourself away, can you? You can't chase yourself around the bedroom. I don't mean the bedroom, or the living room, or the kitchen, or the supermarket, wherever you decide to do such things. I like to do it in the freezer department of the supermarket of my choice.
So, yeah, and every, every expanding idea of stuff. So I've got this friend, yeah, I got this friend, and he says, I can't think of the words he uses, but he's a proper reader. He's, you know, he reads a lot.
And he uses words as if it's normal for a conversation, but it's not. And this was, I remember, this is years ago. And he couldn't even make out that he was using that in a conversation, because I knew, firstly, I was one of the only people he ever talked to.
Secondly, I was probably the most intelligent person he knew, because he didn't talk, didn't know anyone else, really, not many, but not the most intelligent, but he always, I was equal. There wasn't anyone else that was using bigger words than me. Yeah, he'd come out with these words, these sentences.
I thought, what are you doing? And they all existed. They were real words. So I don't know if it's, I think, I don't know, he's trying to show off his vocabulary.
I'm not sure. No, I just don't know. I don't know after, I don't know what, I should get myself a little dictionary, or a thethorith.
That would be, I used to have a thethorith. And I bought one years ago. But a bit disappointing, because I thought it was going to be full of pictures of dinosaurs.
So yeah, I did, because there was a time I wanted to expand my, my, what's the right word? My vocation, not vocation. Vacation. Vaccination.
Vagrancy. My wordage. I wanted to expand my wordage.
Yeah, maybe. I suppose because I was, if I'd have been brought up in a, I don't know, like a really good educational place, and sort of gone to, gone to Eton, or something like that, you know, or gone to Cambridge, and Oxford University, but grown up in that way to lead to that. Perhaps I would speak, I would speak a lot different.
Speak a lot better. My words would be better, my sentences would be more, more fruitful. I don't know.
I would sound different. I'd talk differently. So I'd probably be a lot better at this than I am, because I only know about 16 words.
And I do repeat them. Yeah, I do repeat them. Only 16 words.
And there's something I do say quite a lot. But and is such a handy word, isn't it? It links. It's a linkage word.
So I like that. I think part of the reason is because you're doing a recording, especially when I'm doing a recording, let's say, if I'm doing a hypnosis session, there is no ending to the session until the end, to right at the end. There is no full stops in any of the sentences.
So right from the start, regardless of how long it lasts, whether it's six minutes, or 67 minutes, it's, it's one sentence, the whole thing. Therefore, it needs to be linked together. And linkage words, so, therefore, and.
But sometimes just a pause can be a linkage. I've got no idea what I'm talking about. You can tell that, can't you? Making it up as I go along.
I'm like a horse without a radish. And not only am I the first person, I never said that. No one's ever said that.
A horse without a radish makes no sense. But how much of the stuff does make sense when people, oh, by the way, by the way, I still haven't been able to send out those disc drives of the competition winners from back in 1943. The winners.
I just can't. It's the postage place, the post office, the people queuing out. I probably said this the other day, but it's genuinely, they're basically camping up my bum.
The queue, there's no, the shop is way too small for distancing. You'd, you know, literally they say four people at a time in the shop. That's how many people could, you couldn't even queue four from one end to the other of the shop.
And it's not their fault. It's no one's fault. It's, you know, so I'm not sort of saying it in a moaning way, although I am, I am also.
But to be fair, I'm just glad they're open because it's either that or go all the way to the supermarket. And I can't, I can't face that. I'd rather spend twice as much money on half, you know, on the food.
My food is a limited now. I'm eating very little of anything really. I'm running out of stuff in the freezer as well now.
It's getting a bit low, but I don't know, anything's better than going to the supermarket. It's just, I don't know. I've not been to the supermarket.
It's got to be a month now, at least three weeks, probably a month, which is a long time, isn't it? And so I've just been buying from the garage and from the corner shop. It's not a corner shop. It's like a local convenience store, but it's not local either.
So it's pretty much an hour journey there and back. It's not a huge distance, but, oh man, it's, I get in there and I'm out. I'm in there and out.
And it's the only time I think I've ever actually gone into a shop knowing exactly what I'm going to buy and planning it like some kind of, I don't know, wedding, you know, just read everything down to its, to a very basic thing. Like, don't forget the ring. Don't forget the ring kind of situation.
So I'm there and I'm thinking, okay, I need milk. Bog roll. I don't need, I've got enough.
Cans of Coke, maybe. If, of course, I don't drink Coke, if there's anyone listening, there are things I shouldn't. But, you know, it's like breakfast cereal, maybe bread.
I'm getting short on beans and stuff, but maybe some eggs. Just very basics. They've got bars of chocolate for a pound each.
I normally try and get three or four bars of chocolate. So that'll last me a few days. Just so I've got something in the fridge just to, just to lick.
You know, I don't lick the fridge. I don't lick the chocolate. No, but I once said lick.
I don't know. It's a thing I used to do, and I still do this now and then, which I'm surprised I've got any teeth whatsoever, is Cadbury's chocolate. And this, I guess it could, you could do with any kind of chocolate, but I've noticed it's particularly good with the milk chocolate.
Not a Yorkie. I've never tried a Yorkie because it's quite thick. It's like very chunky.
I like like the more thinner ones, but nothing in, just chocolate. Uh, milk Cadbury's. Yeah, just Cadbury's milk chocolate.
It's got the brown packaging, brown and yellow, I think. And I don't know why I'll pretend I don't know what the colour of the package is. I do know the colour of the packaging.
If I close my eyes and you say to me, tell me what your niece looks like, or would you recognise your niece or describe a bar of chocolate cover? I can do the bar of chocolate a lot easier. It's much easier to visualise the chocolate because it's more important, isn't it? It's, I can't wait. My niece has been around for, you know, a year or two.
Chocolate, you know, since I was a kid, it's embedded in my brain, but I like to just let it melt in my mouth. I just, I like it just to, to almost like sink deep into my gums in between my teeth. I'll tell you something I used to do.
I used to do these, we used to have these cigarette chocolate, sweet cigarettes. We used to have white ones, this was when I was a kid, by the way, we only had the white ones and chocolate ones. And they used to come in packets that looked like cigarette packets, tiny little versions, which were basically just there to, well, clearly prepare little kids to sort of have a positive connection between cigarettes.
Either that or they were just sweets. It was just a novelty. You know, I'm not sure if there's any psychological exploitation of children.
It might have been, I don't know. Anyway, what I used to like to do, I didn't mind the chocolate ones, but I preferred the white ones because white ones are a little bit harder than chocolate ones because chocolate obviously is, I say obviously, but in this case, they were more softer and they used to break easier. They'd snap easier than the white ones.
But I still liked them. I still like the chocolate ones, but I'd eat the chocolate ones easier. I'd just go, I'd just like get one out of there.
I just, it's a little bit, it's like with my teeth, just, just eat the whole thing. But like tiny little bites, a bit like with the alien movies. I actually had a set of teeth that came out of my mouth separate just for the chocolate.
The white ones, the, like the white cigarettes, I used to suck on them for hours. I'm talking till they were like a pin. I just made a weird noise and it'd be absolutely sharp, but it just felt nice to have it in my mouth and to, to create something.
It's like, I'll be sitting there watching television. And I don't know why I'd be watching the A-team or who knows what things was on back then. Generation game.
Yeah. I mean, I did this thing with cigarettes right the way up to probably 12, 13, probably. There must've come a time when we stopped getting sweets.
Because what my, what my mum used to do, she used to have bags of sweets for me and my three, well, all of us, me and my three brothers. And we used to have this settee in the living room, in the sitting room. And in the corner, there was a table.
It was like a corner table. And the settee came out from either side. So I'd be sitting there.
That's how, this is how I learned to use my peripheral vision. Because even though I was looking at television, the other side of the room, my right eye peripheral vision was focused on that bag of sweets, trying to figure out which one was going to be mine. And that's all I was focusing on.
And usually we would get them, you know, shortly after we'd had our dinner. And our dinner would be, our evening meal would be like a snack. Like sandwiches, sausage rolls, crisps, you know, all that stuff.
Cakes. I can't believe I didn't end up being fat. Wait a minute.
Oh yeah. No, but back then I wasn't. I was so slim.
I mean, that's the thing. If ever I had the opportunity to be a big child, that was it. Because I ate well.
I don't know so much that I ate well, but I had the opportunity to eat well. Lots of cooked meals, all that stuff. But I was just like a little, like a stick.
I genuinely, honestly, it's hard to explain. Seriously, I was really, really skinny. All through school, all through, right the way pretty much to 2005, no, 1995.
So when I was 25, suddenly, bing. And that was the first time I took antidepressants. And I put on half a stone.
And within about two weeks, I just suddenly put on lots. And when you're really, really skinny, like really, half a stone is a lot. At my weight, I probably lose more than that when I go to the toilet.
So half a stone is nothing. But half a stone back then, which is what, seven pounds. It's like, wow, suddenly, it was like growing a new limb.
Wow, I'm so heavy. Alas, you know, it meant from then on, never, I didn't, yeah, no, I never had to be worried about the weather. Because before that, it was windy outside, I had to wear extra heavy boots with bits of metal inside just to keep me stuck to the ground.
Bit like astronauts on the moon. Well, exactly like those boots. Now I can stand in a hurricane and it can't affect me.
I just, nothing blows me over. I'm like a weeble. Remember the weeble? Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.
That's me, I'm a weeble. I can't fall down. Well, I can fall down, but I can't get up again if I do.
But it's hard. It's, the wind just doesn't affect me. I go out sometimes in the winter with my friend and the wind's like really hitting him, you know, it's like, and me, I'm just, it's almost like the wind's avoiding me.
It's just going around. It's like, well, we're never going to get to the other side of the park if we try and go through him. Let's just go around him.
It's just, the wind can't affect me. So that's, that's probably the only good thing about being heavy is in the winter, first of all, you don't, well, I say you, but me, I don't get that cold when I'm outside. I get cold if I'm sitting in a cold room, just sitting there.
But if I'm walking, then generally I'm all right. It's not, I don't mean, I'm not walking around in me swimming trunks. I do wear, you know, winter, well, not winter clothes, I wear a jacket and stuff.
But, you know, I've gone through winters where I've not worn no gloves, gone through where I've not worn a hat or anything. And it depends on whether I've got hair. Because if you're bald, which I think I was for a bit of this winter, if you're a baldy, you have to wear a hat in, when it's cold outside, you need to discard because the heat just, you can see it.
Honestly, the other day, I was walking down the street and someone said, hey mate, what are you doing with that kettle on your head? Because there was steam raising above my head. I turned around and I said, what are you talking about, it's not a kettle, it's just I'm hot and bald. I've never seen a bald person.
You know, I shook my head and suddenly it's raining a lot, but when it's raining, it's hot. Actually, it was a kettle. I actually did have a kettle on my head.
I don't know how I got there. But the point is, you can see it right, that the head releases a lot of steam, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because it's good to have a little bit of release, you know, it's good for the head to release stuff. There's something quite nice about being bald.
Not how I look, because it doesn't suit me at all, but it doesn't matter because I've not got to look at myself. So there, yeah, so there, I don't care. I didn't feel I'd ever be that, I never thought I'd ever got to the point in my life where I didn't really care how I looked.
When I say I don't care how I look, I don't want to go out with stains on my trousers or my top. I'm not that kind of that level. And I do try to wash my balls, depending on whether I'm playing football or cricket, you know, keep the balls clean.
But I've noticed, you know, up with my beard, it's just scraggly. Put it this way, if I walked up to you in the street and said, have you got any spare change? You wouldn't question it. You know, you wouldn't question it.
You'd just like, either you'd give me spare change or you'd make an excuse and say no, but you wouldn't think, oh wait a minute, he doesn't look like someone who should be asking for spare change. I look really rough, really rough, which is fine. Mind you, I don't really fit the profile of someone asking or begging in the streets because most people begging in the streets generally don't have much weight on them.
So you don't, heroin can do that, can't it? But it's, yeah, it's this young girl that sells the big issue. I can't get my head around why she does it. I actually sort of, I don't know how I managed, how it happened, but I ended up like being friends with her.
And she says she's homeless, but then she said she's got two kids at home. She's from somewhere, Bulgaria? No. Romania? I think Romania.
Yeah, Romania. And she's this little, tiny little thing, and she's like 22, something like that. And she's a beautiful young woman.
She's very, you know, really attractive. And she's been standing on that corner, not, I don't say it's a corner, like she's not asking for business, but she's selling the big issue. Although people asking for business don't always stand on the corner, do they? I used to live in London Road in the red light district anyway.
And that's another thing. She wasn't there. So it's a different person.
And she, I was trying to sort of say, well, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? You can get help. You've got children that were born here. You can get help.
You don't have to be standing here all day, trying to make 20 pound, standing on your feet all day long in all the weather. I bought her shoes. I bought her food.
I even bought toys for her kids for Christmas, for some reason. I have no contact with her outside of her standing on the street. So I'm not, it's not like I'm trying to get anything out of her.
It's just, every time I see her, it's like, can you do this? Can you help me? Can you, she's all asking for something. And I'm a bit of a soft touch, I guess. So if it wasn't for that language barrier, I could actually probably help her and say, listen, let's get this, let's get your situation sorted out, find you somewhere to live, get this.
But I realized, I kind of came to the conclusion that I think that she's probably being sort of controlled by someone else who's possibly got her passport, because she said she didn't have a passport, which does not make sense. Like, well, how did you get it? Because if you're coming from Europe, you don't need to hide in the back of a truck. You know, if you're coming from Bulgaria or any of the European countries, maybe in the future, but at the moment, you know, for the last 30 years or whatever, you can just come.
And Bulgaria and Croatia, those places, Bulgaria and Romania, it was about five or six years ago when they become part of the European Union, or they joined, joined it. So she must have had a passport when she came here. Because you can't, I think the only country you can go to without a passport, I might be wrong here, but I'm sure it's Ireland.
Because Ireland, even though it is a separate country, we're very closely connected to that country. Because part of Ireland is some classes, part of the UK, part of England, Britain or whatever. From my perspective, it's because Ireland is our sister.
It's like a close relative. Not everybody feels that way. But for me, Ireland is as close a relative as any other country will ever be.
Apart from, you know, Scotland, Wales, you know, but I'm talking about outside of the waters, you know, across the ocean or whatever. Because Ireland has been such a huge, so many people from Ireland came to England, moved here, you know, lived here, and started families. And I come from one of those families.
So my grandmother's parents were both Irish. So they came over here. They came over here, came to my country.
They came here and her family was already here as well. So it was always part of the family. And we they said, would that be my great granddad? Her father would be my great granddad, wouldn't it? So he worked on the roads.
So, you know, you look at the roads, the highways, the motorways, all that stuff around the country. And a lot of that has been built by Irish hands. You know, going back even now, but going back probably hundreds of years.
Not only by Irish hands, I'm just saying by a lot of Irish hands, also legs and feet and eyes and bodies and stuff as well. So I can't really be prejudiced against Irish people because not that I want to be, but it just doesn't really doesn't make sense to, you know, I've kind of got quite a fondness towards Irish, the Irish, because I've got Irish blood in me. And that's a little bit distilled, diluted partly through the... Maybe that's why I like alcohol so much.
Maybe. I don't know. But I went through a phase when I was drinking, drink, drink, drink, alcohol, alcohol.
And there was a part of me that once I started drinking, I went through a little phase when I was living with Andre, the original Andre, and he was Irish, Irish, born and bred. And I started to get into that mindset of being able to drink continuously and to push past the barrier and just keep drinking and keep... It's like, oh. And it was weird because I've never lived like that before.
It was only one summer, summer of 94, where I was just drinking. I was going to work and then drinking straight away after work, drinking all weekend, and then sometimes going to work drunk. You know, so I'd be drinking at work Friday, go back, go out to the pub straight away after work.
And then there'd be a late house or, you know, so everyone would stay in the pub till about three or four. I'd go home, I'd lay down for maybe an hour and then go to work for six on Saturday morning and I'd be drunk. It was just weird, but it was fun.
But I think the reason it was fun because it was just for one summer. If I was still doing it, I'd probably be dead, to be fair. If I still lived like that, if I was living that kind of level, I would have had a proper problem probably.
And yeah, very not a good way to live, but for like a holiday, it was quite nice. Plus I was quite young. Yeah, so I think it was, I know it's a cliche, the drinking, Irish drinking and stuff like that.
But when I lived over there, I think maybe it's because the pubs, they've kept the tradition of the pubs, or when I was there anyway, it's like proper traditional pubs kept alive. So that the ancestors of the people, so someone might be sitting in there, Paddy and Rowan, whatever, might be sitting at the bar, but their parents and uncles and aunts might also be in there or was in there earlier or might come in later. And then their granddad might be getting there.
And then their great grandpa or great grandda used to be going in that pub and then it goes back for hundreds of years. So I suppose it's that tradition that maybe isn't, it hasn't been anywhere that I've lived. Not really.
A lot of changes. Even when I went to Stratford in London, there was a, I think, I don't know where was it, I think it was in the bakery opposite the pub. And there was a picture, unless it was actually in the pub, but there was a picture of that area back in probably in 1930s, 40s.
And it was all tram lines and all this kind of stuff. Very different to how it is now, or how it was then. And now, I say now, it's a few years back though, I went back and even the pub, if it's now a coffee house, not gonna be anyone drinking in there now, but changed, lots of changes.
I got rid of a lot of tower blocks and then built other buildings to replace them. But they're lower down. So instead of being 12 storeys high, they're spread out further.
So they're taking up more room. So there may be now there are only two storeys high that's spread all around. So they're reducing the space that's available for people to live in.
And you know what? If you don't know about tower blocks, it's not everybody's gonna know what it's like. But the old council houses, the old council houses, although I lived in a few council houses and ex-council houses, they're always nice, always big, really, they're not small. The council houses, and I lived in a mixture of council houses and former council houses.
So, but council places I lived in. Some of them I don't know, because we are subletting, so they might have been council. I'm not sure.
But as far as council houses, I lived in one, two, three, four, five, I think at least five council houses and a couple of council flats. Oh, and this flat, three. I forgot about the place I actually live.
You know what I'd like to do more of? I'd like to get in touch with gratitude. Of what I actually have. To be grateful of what I've got.
You know, I've got this place. I've got Andre. I've got my little Andre.
I mean, think about it. I've had two, two wonderful people in my life, both called Andre. The original Andre, who's my best friend.
For a while, it wasn't, it's only for a few years, but he's still one of the closest. I've had other friends as well. I've got my friend Kevin and I've got my friend here now that I've known for a few years.
Used to have a friend. I've had a few friends that have kind of come and gone over the years. There was one, who's the other one? One, two.
I had one friend that I had since 1989. So I haven't, yeah, we kind of broke up. We fell out of love with each other.
Or he fell out of love with me. So I'm not quite sure. He's dead.
I don't know what was going on. But that's all right. And so even then, you know, the gratitude, even though that friend from when I was like 18, when I first met him, even though he was really horrible to me the last time on the phone, I still recognize the fact that he helped me so much in my late teens and early 20s.
It really helped me. You know, I went through periods when I had no money, was homeless, had no food, and he'd send me money. You know, he'd send me a check in the post or he'd send me cash in the post or he'd send it to somewhere where I could collect it, you know, something like that.
And because he was a miner. So he had, I don't mean he was under 18. I mean, he was, you know, worked in the mines.
So he had a very well-paid job, which shows you how long ago it was, doesn't it? The fact that he was a miner. I mean, that job doesn't even exist anymore, I don't think. Not in this country.
So I think it's starting to become popular in some other countries. But I, so I still, I recognize that, I still see the value and kind of can get in touch with that gratitude of, you know what, even if he ended up being a however he was at the end, he actually really was there for me. And he really loved me.
Well, you know, he did care about me at the time. So, yeah. But life's weird like that, isn't it? It's like people come, people go.
And I don't really get attached to people. And he was probably one of the only people, one of the few people I actually got attached to. But it took years and years and years and years and years to get to that point.
You know, there's, I met him, what, 1989. And I stayed with him in 19, I stayed with him in 2000. So it was 10 or 11 years before I actually stayed with him.
Like stayed, not lived with him, but I visited him, but I'd normally come home. Or his mom was there anyway, but his mom moved out. So it was only after sort of 10 years of knowing him, nine, 11 years, whatever, that I felt kind of trusted to actually sleep in the same house as him.
That's kind of the trust level that I got. And I used to speak to him regularly. He used to just be on the telephone, in public telephones and, yeah, speak to him for hours.
There's probably no one else in the whole world, in my whole life, I'll have ever spoke to as much as I did to him. Probably for the rest of my life, I'll probably never meet anyone. Because there's not enough time now, really.
Because I've spent so many, so many hours, especially when I was a security guard, he'd phone up, we'd be speaking like nearly all night, sometimes. Or, you know, it's just like, so nice just to know that I'm never gonna have to do that much talking or listening ever again. Yes, it is.
I'll have a little drink. Is it me or does the time really be go? Does it, does it really be going quickly? It seems to be going quickly. About 51 minutes into this and it doesn't really feel like I've been talking for more than 49.
No, more than like maybe 15. I don't know, really. Who'd have thought it? I took Andre for a walk earlier, and it was about, I don't know, seven o'clock or something.
I don't, if I take him out at that kind of time, it's normally locally, it's normally, you know, within a park or something. Because, you know, I don't go, well, basically, we went into the fields. I don't, you know, I don't go into the fields.
I don't do that when it's, I don't do that in a daylight when it's nice and bright, generally. The last few days, I've been taking her into the fields late afternoon. But yesterday, or last night, I thought, you know, because what I try and do is just, I take him out and I let him lead the way.
So I just follow him wherever he wants to go, as long as he doesn't just walk out in the road. So I have to keep an eye on him and, you know, rein him in a bit. Generally, I just follow him.
If he wants to roll around in the mud or in some grass and sniff around and stuff for a few minutes, I just stand and wait for him. So we go around the corner, and there's a huge amount of fields where I live, just surrounded by fields. And literally, just at the end of the road, it's just fields, as far as you can see.
Unless, of course, you've got a better eyesight than me. You probably get her and look and it's like, well, it's only one field. It's only like 16 foot long.
You really need to test your eyes. Stop having a go at me. So I thought he was going to go out the path, the normal path route that he goes.
Because usually, he's a creature of habit. That's another phrase I don't, I don't know if I've used that. I might have used it in the past, but not on a recording.
I probably used it, actually I might have used it in a recording, but not this year. Not last year, but maybe the year before. Bear in mind, I'm in my third year of doing this.
It started, was it February 2018? So 2018, 2019. Now it's 2020. So yeah, so I'm just walking.
There's a couple of people trying to avoid them. So I'll keep my own way away. And then I'm just following him.
And I think he's going to turn right. And he does. At that point, it's not really light enough.
I'm thinking I really want to walk into the into the fields. But it's basically up one path and down another path. It's a very, very long, it's like the side of a whole field, and then back the other side of the field, the other side of the ditch, basically.
And the day before I did it, and it was muddy. It's covered in mud, not covered in mud at all. Such an exaggeration.
Yes, I was rolling around. I didn't roll around in the mud. Why would I do that? I had mud on my shoes.
Yeah, that's true. That's the legitimate truth. So I kind of thought, I suppose I can do it.
At least it's not muddy, because it wasn't muddy. And he started to walk up the path bit, which is well worn. A lot of people walk up and down there.
The other side coming back is just a little bit worn. And it's a proper field growing. The other side is not a lot happening on one side.
Anyway, he turned back again. I thought, oh, he wants to just go to the park. Couldn't be more wrong.
He walked up the other pathway. I thought, oh, he wants to walk up that pathway. Couldn't be more wrong.
Well, I thought it could have been more wrong. I could have like, oh, he wants to start up a hot dog stall and sell hot dogs to passersby. That would have been more wrong than what he actually did.
But he decided and he started walking into the field. And I thought, no, he's going to do what he does usually. If he does that, he just rolls around in the mud or in the dirt.
It's a little bit of a dig. And then he comes back and starts walking up the path. Nope.
And because I've got the extension and he's just walking straight across, straight across the field, straight across. And I didn't, I thought, what are you doing? What? He was, it's like he, I don't know if he caught a smell of something or he just, he decided that's what he was going to do. And he's never done that.
Not really before. Not like that. So I just follow him.
So I'm walking across the whole, the width of a field. It's quiet. It's a big old field.
And I'm like, oh, am I, is this, is this legal? Am I allowed to do this? And anyway, I did it. I'll just blame it on him, won't I, if I get in trouble. And if the farmer does come up to me and he's got a gun, then that's going to be fun and games.
But he, he's like, he's so determined to get to the other side. So okay. Now I'm usually, I'm really generous with him.
You know, like go wherever you want to go, Andre. I'll just follow you. And I was still in that frame of mind.
He took me on a scenic route, halfway around the county. Literally, he just walking completely different parts of the place I've never been before. Did not know where I was going.
And then we ended up at the duck pond. Well, there's no ducks there. It's a pond.
Just sounds better if you say duck pond, doesn't it? You could say frog pond. Yeah, it's a pond. It's more of an overflow from the fields, really.
But it's a pond that does, when it gets busy, well, when it's rainy, it gets busy. When the, when the water gets busy, it overflows into the actual field. But so I knew kind of my way back.
But I was thinking, which way is the way back? And I just follow him and he brings me back. Brings me back to the, there's this little gate thing, which or a little bridge you can walk over. So he brought it back to there.
So I knew where I was then. He took me all the way around. And then through here and through there.
At one point, he took me into a ditch, which I could walk across because there was some, when it's sometimes got water in it, but because it's dry, there was no water. It wasn't muddy, but it had sticks down the bottom. It looks like people have put it down there so they could get across.
Maybe people on bikes and stuff. So he walks down there. I follow him.
He's rolling around in the sticks and, you know, I think, come on. And then he walks back up the way he came. I basically nearly slipped over getting down because the ditch is about six foot, but not straight down.
It's a curvy six foot. I don't know, like a six foot buttock, I suppose, imprint. And so I go in and I come back again.
He walks up a little bit one way, then he comes back. Then he goes down the thing again. I said, I'm not following this time.
And then he walks up the other bit. So he actually goes all the way to the other side. So I have to follow him.
Getting up the other end was harder because it was a bit more slippier. And literally, he was just leading me absolutely nowhere. And then when he got me to the point of where, right to the bridge bit, where I knew where he was, I realized the line, you know, the lead is getting heavier.
I'm dragging him. He's refusing to walk. He's gone on strike.
That's it. Doesn't want to walk. That's what he does.
When he doesn't want to walk, he doesn't. So I'll pick him up. And as soon as I pick him up, he's scratching to get inside my jacket.
So he's naked, absolutely naked. So I put him inside my jacket. And I'm walking all the way back on my own.
Well, he's still with me. But he's in my jacket and he taps on the, it's like a little, it's a zip. But sometimes I feel like he's knocking on the door so we can sort of undo the zip, open the door so we can have a look out.
And I said, do you want to get down? And he looked at me like, of course not. And he said he just wanted the window open a bit. Okay.
And then he went back in. So I pulled the zip up. Just as I was getting to the last little bit of the walk, literally the last, probably less than a minute of walking of this bit of pathway in the field, he suddenly comes awake and wants to get down.
He knows, he really knows what he's doing. Do you remember, is it taken two or taken three? The one where, if you've not seen it, I don't want to spoil it, but it's just a particular part of it. It's a particular set of skills.
Andre's got a particular set of skills. He's been kidnapped, old Liam, I'm way too old to be playing a tough guy, Neeson. And he is blindfolded in the back of a van.
He's actually counting in his head, you know, how many, I don't know, it's that kind of thing, how to work out the distance of how far they're driving. And I think Andre's there. He's counting how many footsteps, so he knows when to sort of tap on the door again for me to undo my zip and he can walk the rest of the way.
He's clued up, really is. And I almost feel like he's got some kind of clickometer thing. So I heard like, I don't know where he keeps it, must be up his bum or something.
And so we got back. He didn't want to go to the park, he turned left, he wanted to come home. Got home.
As soon as I closed the door, well, I opened it first, but then I closed it and I took his lead off. I took my jacket off. He's sniffing at the door.
I was like, what are you sniffing at the door for? You've just been out. And we was out for probably an hour, possibly more, maybe an hour and a half, I don't know. It was quite a long time because it was getting dark by the time we finished, by the time we got home, it was getting dark.
And within about half an hour, maybe an hour, he was scratching the door trying to get out again. It's just like, come on, man. So I think I'm going to have to get his cage out of the storage room, stick it in there.
There's no, I did sort of tidy the cage up a couple of weeks ago and put him in there for 20 minutes when I was trying to make a recording because it was just annoying me. But I don't, because the storage room's got too much stuff in there, I don't want to put him in there. It feels like I'm putting him in with the storage, you know, with all the wardrobe and all the other stuff.
So I want to get the cage out and put it in the living room, in the corner, the other side of the room. And then when he's doing that scratching the door, I just stick him in the cage. Then he's going to be rattling the cage.
He grabs the bars and rattles them with his hands. Seriously, rattles the cage, rattles the bars of the cage. So I'm still going to hear that, aren't I? Even if I'm in the other room.
Oh, man. The other thing is perhaps get some kind of material that I can stick to the bottom of the doors, the front door and this door in here, so that when he scratched against it, it doesn't make much sound. I don't know what will do the job.
I've got plenty of cardboard. Maybe that'll do it. But cardboard's still scratchy, but it's slippery, isn't it? So I think he'd probably give up because he'd just been doing it, he'd just be sliding right off.
Yeah, I think cardboard is going to be the one. I might do that tomorrow or today or maybe last week. I think I'll do it last week.
So that's it for me. I'm going to go and upload this and still so many recordings to upload, but I'm nearly there. It might take another two days.
I don't know. But it is nearly there. It is nearly.
And what I've been watching on Amazon, a TV show called Upload or Uploaded. I don't know if it's Upload or Uploaded, but it's really good, really good TV show. So I've been watching that all day yesterday.
And I figured a way to be able to use the internet properly is by unplugging. Because I had the, I forget what they call it, but the link, the lead directly from the internet hub into the laptop, which basically cut off the Wi-Fi from anything else. It was practically unusable.
So I've taken it and when it was plugged, I've taken it out so that it's not plugged to anything. So everything's just using Wi-Fi. So now I was able to use the internet on telly and to upload stuff.
It takes a little bit longer, but I thought, wow, okay, this is okay now. So now I can function. Everything's a bit more functionable because before that I was just uploading stuff and I couldn't do anything but watch normal telly and there wasn't much on, listen to the radio.
It just got boring because the uploading part, it really is boring. It's unstimulating. It's really just making pages and uploading the file.
So yeah, that's it. Oh, it's a bit chilly in here now. The temperature's weird this time of the year.
What is it? May, isn't it? So it's, I don't know, still spring, but it's sometimes it's warm, sometimes it's cold. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know what's going on in here. It's cold.
Heating comes on, then it goes off, then it's on and like, oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh, dude, I need to go to the chemist and get my medication, but oh, I can't face it. Oh, dear.
Again, no, I'm just gonna, uh, trying to avoid supermarkets, really. Just that whole queuing outside and stuff. Oh, no.
No, me not like that. No. Mind you, it's an ideal opportunity to dress up as the Lone Ranger, you know, with the old mask and the hat, of course.
Yeah, if only my Lone Ranger suit still fitted me. But unfortunately, I'm slightly bigger than I was when I was eight. Just slightly.
So that's it. I'm gonna go. So thank you very much for listening.
Remember, remember to be kind to yourself, because you do deserve to be happy. Lots of love. Bye.
Bye. Bye. Bye.
Paragraph spacing and recurring name or title errors have been tidied. Because this began as a voice transcription, an occasional word or piece of punctuation may still be incorrect.