#22 Let me bore you to sleep - LIVE - Jason Newland (4th May 2018)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep and my name is Jason Newland. I'm trying to think what I normally say at the beginning of these. Oh yeah, only listen or watch this video or listen to the podcast if you can safely close your eyes.

So if you're digging a well, mining for gold, you know, maybe don't listen to this at those times. If you're a driving instructor or maybe you're just about to jump out of a plane with a parachute on your back, well hopefully you do have a parachute on your back, but this isn't the right thing to be listening to. Basically any time when you need to have a degree of awareness or not even a degree of awareness, I guess that's kind of total awareness, isn't it? If you're jumping out of a plane or total stupidity, it depends which way you look at it.

But this could also, yeah, this sleep session may cause drowsiness. So I haven't, oh my chair is getting squeakier. I haven't recorded one of these for a few days or a couple of days, two or three days, I don't know.

I do believe this is number 22, which is pretty good for me. I think the most amount of sessions I've ever done in a series is the daily relaxation for stress and anxiety that I did last year. They lasted for 34 days, but that was just 34 days in a row.

So I haven't, those are weird times. I haven't done these every day for 22 days. Right, I'm leaning all the way back now.

Tonight is the elections, the local elections around my country. When I say my country, I don't mean that I own this island. I wouldn't say Ireland, I mean Ireland as in the country Ireland, I mean as in the England.

I don't, I don't, you know, I don't own it, but I say mine because the majority of people that listen to my stuff and watch my stuff is, are from other countries around the world. So that was a long version, wasn't it? That was even more boring than I was intending for it to be. So the point of these sessions really is just for me to waffle on and talk.

There may be background sounds and that's okay. You may hear Andre jump up out of his bag and start scratching or run over and do a whoopsie on the paper. And if you're not sure what a whoopsie is, then you need to research 1970s sitcoms.

Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do Heaven used to say about the dog, the dog's done a whoopsie on the carpet. Now that might not have been the best impression of Frank Spencer ever done, performed. However, if you don't know who Frank Spencer is, and you've never heard of the program, then that is the best impression of Frank Spencer that you've ever heard.

So I, I'll take that. I'll take that as a, as a gold star of impressionism, impressionisticism, doing impressions. I don't do many impressions really.

I used to do I used to do an impression of Richard Pryor. The thing is with impressions, I find I need to put a bit of effort. I don't mean that I'm too lazy to actually do them.

I don't mean I have to put effort in, you know, not in the sense of the problem of eating. I have to put the effort of, you know, lifting the food to my mouth and chewing. And I don't mean like that.

I don't mean incredible laziness. I mean, it takes a bit of effort vocally, which means that I'd need to speak a bit louder. And you know, if I start talking really loudly or shouting, it wouldn't really fit in with this session.

I'm feeling a bit of gas building up inside my tummy. You know that feeling when you get, you can feel the gas is there. There's not much going on, but it's like you can feel there's a, a knock at the back door, you know, and the gas is waiting to, for the back door to open.

Kind of, that makes sense, but I'm going to keep that door shut while I talk to you. So thank you to those of you on YouTube for your lovely comments and your support. And I was planning to actually make a list of people who had left comments and thanked them on this session.

And I'd like, you know, I'd like to tell you that I forgot to do it. If I'm honest, you know, I thought about doing it and that's as far as I got. I genuinely couldn't be bothered.

And it sounds bad maybe that, you know, I do like getting comments, but I didn't care enough to write a list of the people that wrote the comments. That's just laziness, I suppose. And you could, you know, I think part of these, part of these sessions is for you to just maybe relax, you know, let go with maybe less and less external stimulation.

You know, as time goes by, if I started reading your name out and I don't know about you, but if I was listening to a recording and my name is mentioned, I might weed myself with excitement. You know, I get a bit, oh, I remember when I was young. I remember the days when I used to say I remember when I was younger.

Now it is officially I remember when I was young. I was in hospital with, I think I'd had my appendix out. I've been in hospital twice, two different operations, I guess.

Well, I suppose it could be the same operation, but it means the hospital didn't do a very good job the first time, I guess. I've also, it's my appendix, so you can't, can't have them out twice. I don't know if you knew this, but apparently I didn't really want this to be some graphic description of surgery or anything like that.

But apparently if somebody goes to hospital and they, the doc, you know, the surgeon opens the, you know, takes your appendix out anyway, appendectomy or whatever, even if the appendix are fine, you know, open up the appendix instead of being all rumbled and maybe in a bit of a mess, they open up and they see the appendix, sitting there in a deck chair with shades on, drinking a shandy, you know, it's just having a whale of a time. It's like they still have to take out the appendix and not allowed to leave them in. And I remember I, I said to the nurse, I said, why is that? And part of the reason why I was asking her was her name was nurse Nichols.

And I think I was about 12 years old. I really, really fancied her. I really, really liked her.

And she was old, but in reality, she probably wasn't old. She's probably only maybe 20, 21, 22, something like that. But, you know, she's for me, she's a lot older, but I really, really liked her.

Anyway, that's why I was talking to her. It wasn't the only reason I was talking to her. I also saw her as a human being.

I wasn't, you know, it wasn't that I was obsessed with, with her or anything like that. You know, I was, yeah, I didn't pretend to have appendicitis so I could get into the ward. So I could talk to that nurse.

I mean, it wasn't anything weird like that. I genuinely was in there to have an operation. There's, you know, no pretense.

They evolved really. But anyway, she, I say really, I mean, you know, completely, really, you know, sometimes when people say the word really after something, it's like they're maybe questioning it themselves. Yeah.

I wouldn't ever want to do anything like that. Not really. Okay.

I'd never steal your car. Not really. So I was talking to nurse Nichols and it shows actually, before I tell you what I said to her, the fact that I remember her name and what am I? 47 now.

So 12. I'm just going to work out how many years is. So 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47.

So over 10 years. And notice how my voice started to get posher. I started to talk more clearly and much more nicer as I was counting.

I started off like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 voices. You know, I know people that now if you say to them, Oh, something like that to them and say, Oh, well, I was in the hospital. Oh, this thing happened in 1997.

I got into hypnosis and in 1998, actually January. And I say to them, yeah, that was over six years ago. And I've done this with quite a few people over the years, just through, I don't know, just through boredom, I suppose, in some ways, just something to do.

Maybe I'd run out of chocolate or didn't need to go to the toilet for a while. So I had nothing to look forward to. So I just, I'd say this to people.

I'd say, oh yeah, it's over six years. And it always sort of seemed to feel the need to say, no, it's 20 years. That's 20 years ago.

I said, yeah, that's what I said. It's over six years ago. No, but it's 20 years ago.

Yeah. 20 years is over six years ago. Isn't it? Some people really struggle with that.

Maybe it's a little bit naughty of me. I don't know. So Nurse Nicol.

I wonder if her name was Nurse Nicol or Nurse Nichols. Nurse Nicol, Nurse Nichols. Well, I'm not sure.

I suppose it doesn't really matter for the sake of the story. I do, I do like to try and be relatively precise at times. Sometimes.

If I'm going to use a person's real name, then I try to use it correctly. But I don't know what her first name was. Because, you know, I thought I knew her name, but it turned out her first name wasn't Nurse.

Which came as a shock. I remember I gave her, as she left, I gave her a piece of fruit. It was one of four bits.

I don't know which fruit it was I gave to her. I'm not giving her a banana because I do like bananas. And I think sometimes if you give someone something that you like, in some ways it feels perhaps nicer than giving someone something that they like.

Although, in other ways, perhaps giving somebody something that they like would seem a little bit more considerate. Especially if the thing you've given to them that you like is something that they perhaps don't like. For example, if you're with somebody with a nut allergy and you keep buying them chocolates with nuts in.

You know, if you're like got a relationship with someone that has a nut allergy, keep buying them as presents. Christmas, birthdays, you know, wedding anniversaries, things like that. If you keep buying them chocolates and sweets and cakes that have nuts in them, you get to eat them yourself.

So it's just quite good. No, it's not. It's probably not very considerate though.

It's weird though. In a way, I remember Nurse Nichols or Nichol. I remember her name or the surname anyway.

After all those years, since the age of 12. What was it? 12, 22, 32, 42. That's 35 years.

That's under 40 years ago. And I remember her name but I don't remember the names of some of the people that I've been in relationships with. I don't mean while I was with them.

That can get a little bit awkward. It was one time and I was kind of dating a waitress. Her job was a waitress.

I didn't class her as a waitress. I classed her as a human being. I didn't class people or judge them by the jobs they have or by the type of shoes they wear or what kind of wheelbarrow they may use in the garden.

I don't judge people in those ways. And I wasn't with her long enough to really discover too much about her gardening activities. I didn't see any of her gardening tools or a shed or anything like that.

That's not a euphemism. I'm talking about actual... Sorry, I just caught myself off guard there. Right, I'm back.

I'm back. Hopefully you're all asleep so you didn't hear that. I'm not sure if the garden shed has ever been used as a euphemism.

Ever. It'd be so weird if it has been or a wheelbarrow. That'd be strange.

Anyway, I'm back on track. I'm with you. I'm here.

Anyway, there was this person I was seeing, this lady that I was seeing. Our fridge has just come on in the kitchen. When I say come on, I mean it's switched itself on.

There's no... Anyway, I'll forget about that. My chair is creaking again. Sorry about that.

What's weird is she said, you've forgotten my name, haven't you? I said, no, of course not. She said, what is it then? I said, what's what? She said, what do you mean what's what? I said, what? She said, you're trying to evade the question. I said, do you mean evade or avoid? She said, well, what's the difference? I said, I'm not really sure.

I mean, obviously they're spelled differently and they're pronounced differently, but I don't know. Evade feels more like moving to one side and letting the thing go by you, you know? So if someone's chucking a tennis ball at you, evading something feels, I don't know, in my mind it's kind of like, if you play dodgeball, it's you, you move to the side so the ball goes past you and it doesn't hit you. If you're going to avoid the ball, you don't turn up to the game.

You know, if you want to avoid getting hit by a tennis ball, you just don't turn up. So it's, I suppose I said to her, if I was going to avoid the question, I wouldn't be here talking to you. But I suppose, you know, I don't know what you think.

And she said, well, I suppose you make a good point. I've never really thought about it like that before. I mean, admittedly, I use the word avoid a lot more often than I would use the word evade.

And you know, even just saying the word evade, it's starting to sound wrong, like it's not a real word. And I said, well, now you say that, it does sound a bit weird, but maybe if you finish eating your cornflakes, you know, crunch it up, swallow it, and try and say the word without food in your mouth, maybe it will sound a bit different. And she said, well, I don't know what she said, because she had cornflakes in her mouth, and I couldn't really understand it.

But eventually she started talking and she said, what is it you've got against cornflakes? I said, well, she said, you know, I like cornflakes. Why can't you accept that I enjoy eating cornflakes? What's the problem? I said, I don't have a problem with cornflakes. Do you have to eat them when you're on the toilet? And she said, I don't have to.

I choose to. This is my home. And the idea for me in having my own home is to have a safe space to be able to do whatever feels comfortable for me.

So if I want to sit down, put food in one end, new food and let the old food out the other end, then I'll do that. And I said, okay, but do you have to do it when I'm in the bath? And she said, oh, oh, to be honest, I wasn't sure what was going to come next because either she was going to say something that might turn into some kind of a, not the most enjoyable interaction, or she was just trying to think of something to say. And then she looked around for some reason.

I never know why she picked up a toilet roll, not the one that was on the the hook, you know, the toilet roll holder, if you want to call it that. But she picked one up off the shelf because we had the toilet rolls on a shelf just above, it's kind of like head height when you're sitting down on the toilet. So she picked one up and she just rolled it gently out of the bathroom.

And I just traveled into living room. I didn't really understand why she did that, but it was a very good distracting technique. And the other thing that was good about her doing that, it gave me a little bit of time to think about what next I'm going to say.

And she said, don't tell me what to do when I'm on the toilet. I don't want to tell you what to do or what not to do when you're in the bath. So I thought, okay, I'm going to get out of the bath.

So that's what I did. And I've got this little routine where I stand up in the bath. I pull the plug out of the plug hole.

So the water starts to drain away and I'll dry my hair first. I think at that time, my hair was still quite short, but longer than it is now. And what I do then is I have a towel on the floor.

I lean onto the sink, make sure that I've got a very firm grip. And I put, generally it's my left foot first out onto the towel that's on the floor. And then I maneuver my body so that I feel comfortable physically.

Then I move my right foot over the bath side or the side of the bath onto the, I want to say carpet, but it's not right. It's the towel. And it's a special towel.

By that I don't mean it's not really special at all. It's just one that I stand on, but I keep it for that. It's the standing on towel.

That's pretty much the whole, probably much else. I mean, the one I've got at the moment is green. That's my regular standing on towel.

So I go out of the bath and then what I do is I dry myself off. I generally start with, I don't know, possibly the back of my neck, my neck, my shoulders, my arms, under my arms, my chest, and my stomach. The bits I shall not mention.

They get a bit of a dab. And then I dry my legs and all those bits at the back. And I try and like to get out of each side of the towel and try and dry my back.

And I think the last thing I dry is my toes. Because even though the bottoms of my feet are generally fairly dry because the towel, the special towel, I mean, the one I've got now is, it's a green towel. My special standing on towel after having a bath, it soaks up the water from the bottoms of my feet.

But the, sometimes the toes collect a little bit of water, like on top, or in between, or sometimes even on top of the feet, or on top of my feet. I can't talk for everybody. I can only really talk about my own feet.

So I give them a little dab and dry them off. And then I'm pretty much set to go. I put my dressing gown on and any bits of water that maybe I missed, especially on my back, because it's not always so easy to get everything.

The dressing gown generally soaks up whatever's left. It was very, very kind of it. And then I get some tissue paper and I dry off my face.

So I never use a towel to dry my face. And then I chuck the tissue in the toilet. My girlfriend at the time said, could you please wait until I've finished before chucking stuff in there? Because it's just hitting me and it's not going in the toilet.

And I said, sorry, I forgot you were there. I thought this was a normal household, where I could just have a bath, you know, just normally get up and dry off on my standing on towel. It's not green at the moment, but it will be green when I'm in my late forties.

And then what I do is, I still do this now, is I have face moisturizer. So I put moisturizer on my face and neck, face and neck, back of my neck as well, just to moisturize my skin on my face. And a few other little bits, but what I don't mean, I put it on a few other little bits.

I mean, I do a few other bits whilst I'm in the bathroom, but pretty much that's it. And then I went out and I went into the bedroom and my girlfriend at the time, she followed me a couple of seconds later into the bedroom. She said, I asked you a question and I said, okay, I'll answer your question if you answer mine.

And she said, what? I said, well, I've got two. She said, you have two questions for me? I said, yeah, I'll answer your one question if you answer my two questions. She said, that doesn't really seem fair, does it? How come you get two questions and I only get one? I said, I don't know.

I haven't really given it that much thought to be honest with you. I didn't even know we were going to have this conversation. And she said, no, not me neither really.

And she said to me, okay, what were your questions? I said, well, firstly, why didn't you flush the toilet just now? And secondly, did you wash your hands? She said, what do you mean? I said, well, you just followed me pretty much out of the bathroom. I'm not even sure if you wiped. She said, that's very rude of you.

I said, I'm sorry. And she said, that didn't sound very sincere. I said, I know because it wasn't.

She said, what do you mean it wasn't? It wasn't sincere. It's very hard to sound sincere, insincerely. That's the whole point of sounding insincere.

Otherwise, how would we know if somebody was being insincere, if they sounded sincere? She said, what are you talking about? And I kind of wasn't sure myself. So one of those moments, you know, when I thought, ah, this will sound clever. Ah, this will sound good.

This will be, this will be something that I'll be able to tell people one day. Yeah. Maybe one day in the future, 25 years time, I'll make a recording of it.

And I'll talk about it in a recording. And during that recording, I'll also talk about garden sheds and who knows what else. And she said, okay, well, I've answered your questions.

Don't know what you're talking about, about future recordings and stuff. Not really sure what that was all about. But I said, okay.

So what's your question? She said, I asked you earlier. What? You want to know what I get up to in the bath? She said, no, I know what you get up to. I've seen the bath afterwards.

I said, what do you mean? She said, dirt doesn't float around in the bath water like that. I said, what do you mean? Like, like what? She said, the other day, I went into the bath. Remember that day when you said, you can have the bath after me if you want.

You can use it after me. Do you remember? And I said, yeah. I felt quite good inside thinking, well, I'm helping to, you know, save on water, helping to save the planet.

And also I got to have a bath first. So I was quite, and I said, yeah, I remember that. I didn't completely remember it, but I kind of, kind of remembered it.

It's one of those, those unimportant memories that are stored just in case somebody wants to talk about it. Something that's just, you know, a bit like a, bit like a family wedding, you know, something that's happened. You're quite happy just to move on from, but someone might mention it and you'll be able to say, oh yeah, yeah.

I remember when dad got married and he's just got up and he's running around, he's going to be doing that. And she said to me, well, after you'd been in the bath and you'd gotten out and you went and sat down and you were sitting down doing something. And I said, okay, well, this isn't a very interesting story.

It's not really about what you would do when you were sitting down. Well, what is it about? She said, it's about the bath. The bath? Are you still talking about the bath? She said, yes, I'm talking about the bath.

What do you mean when you were on the toilet? She said, no, I'm not talking about the bath. When I was on the toilet just now, I'd moved on from there. And that part of me felt quite grateful that we'd moved on, but I was a little bit confused how we'd moved on, but yet we were still talking about the bath.

And an hour and a half later, she said, when I went into the bathroom after you'd been in there in the bath and I was going to use the bath water after you. And I said, are you really? What do you just want a fresh bath? She said, what? I said, why would you use someone else's dirty water? She said, but that was your idea. Conserving water, saving the planet, keeping down the bills.

That's wasn't it? Your idea? And I said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. Yeah, I remember.

We were talking about that at your brother's wedding, weren't we? She said, what? I said, oh, don't worry. And she said, anyway, when I went into the bathroom and saw the bath, looked like there was these little miniature stingrays floating, these white stingrays floating all around the water, like just long, slimy things. I said, yeah.

And she said, yeah. I said, well, I just said yeah to you and you said yeah back to me. It's not really much of a conversation really, is it? She said no.

And then I got, I got a little bit concerned because when it turns into a one answer situation, it's kind of, there's a flip side, you know, there's a good side to it, there's a not so good side. The not so good side would be that the communication between us is clearly breaking down. But on the plus side, the conversations are a lot quicker.

And I said to her, okay, well, what is that question? She said, what, what question? I said, before you start talking about the bath, you said that you had a question for me and you'd already asked me the question. And I was trying to evade it or avoid it, one of them. And she said, oh yeah.

I remember we were talking about that, weren't we? It seems ages ago that we were talking about avoiding or evading. What's the difference between the two? And you said something about balls and tennis balls and, and evading being something that you could kind of maybe dodge, something that's heading towards you, but avoiding would be making sure you're nowhere near anything. So that you don't have to evade anything because you're, nothing's going to come near you to start with because you're avoiding that situation.

Perhaps, isn't that what you meant? I said, oh, I don't know. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to talk about evading and avoiding and perhaps we can talk about it another time.

I'd just like to just sort out what, if there's something troubling you, I want to sort it out, that's all because I care. Plus, the X factor starts soon. I want to watch television.

And she said, you know, some things perhaps you should just keep to yourself. You don't have to verbalize every thought that you have. And I said, trust me, I really don't verbalize every thought I have.

And she said, well, what does that mean? Well, trust me means believe me, you know, believe, please trust in what I say. She said, no, that's not the bit that I was questioning. I do understand general grammar and, you know, the meaning of sentences.

I've been through the same educational channels and processes that you've been through. I went to school and I said, can I stop you there? She said, why? What's wrong? I said, nothing. I just, I don't know if I want to hear about you going to school.

And she said, why not? I said, well, I don't know how relevant it is to what we're talking about right now. And she said, okay, fair enough. And then there was this like silence.

And she said, do you want an ice, ice lolly? I said, well, not really. She said, why not? I said, well, it's November and the board is broken and I'm cold. And the last thing I want to do right now is put something that's icy inside my body.

She said, she said to me, I'm talking about eating it. I said, so am I. That's what I'm also talking about. She said, well, why didn't you get the boiler fixed? I said, I'm waiting for the person who fixes the boiler to come along, but I couldn't get an appointment until tomorrow.

And she said, well, I thought you were doing it today. I said, I did do it today. I did call them today, but they couldn't come out till tomorrow, but they're coming early in the morning.

So we just got to get through the evening and just keep each other warm and we'll be fine. And she said, yeah, but I've got to go to work. I didn't know what to say.

Sometimes I struggle and it's not that I don't understand what work means. I do understand the concept. I couldn't figure out how that was relevant to what we were talking about.

So I said, I don't, what would you mean you've got to go to work? And she said, well, I've got a shift tonight. I'm working tonight. I said, yeah, but we were talking about the boiler being broken and the boiler cut man or woman, I'm not sure who, although his name is Robert.

So I'm guessing it's a man, but I don't want to discriminate. And she said, I said to her, yeah, but he's coming tomorrow morning. How does that affect you going to work? She said, it doesn't.

I'm confused. I said to her, she said, look, I'm working late, which means I'll be getting home late, which means I don't really want to be woken up early in the morning by the boiler man coming. And I said, oh, I understand.

He said, do you though? Do you really understand? I said, yeah, I do. I've been woken up before. I used to have an alarm clock once.

It used to wake me up regularly. She said, how is that the same thing? I said, well, it's annoying, maybe. Is that what you're saying? You might be annoyed to be woken up by the boiler man.

She said, no, it's I just need to get enough sleep. That's all. I said, I understand that.

I'll tell you what, I'll make sure that I am at the front door and answer the door before the boiler man even gets a chance to knock. And I'll take him through to the boiler and I'll keep the bedroom door closed and you won't have to hear a thing. And then when he's gone, I'll leave you asleep.

And if you want, give me a time you want to get up and I'll wake you up with a nice cup of tea and some cornflakes. And I saw her eyes light up, which is weird. Never understood.

Her eyes just became different colours. Sometimes her eyes turned orange. Never understood why.

And she said, you know what? I said, I don't know what. She said, sometimes you, you can be quite kind. I said, thank you.

You're not too bad yourself. She said, don't you think that I'm kind? I said, yeah, sure you have been kind in the past. Before you, before you met me.

And then I started laughing because I was just joking. I said, I think you're lovely. And she said, really? Yeah, I wouldn't say, I don't say things I don't mean, unless I'm trying to get something.

You know, as I'm trying, I'm just lying to get my own way. And she said, what? She said, do you lie? Do you lie to get your own way? I said, no, not really. It's just a joke.

She said, I don't, you know, I don't want to be manipulated by anybody. I said, well, in that case, don't watch television. She said, but I like television.

I said, me too. Especially the X Factor, which has already started and I'm missing. Well, you go and watch the X Factor and I'll finish getting ready and I'll, maybe we can have a cup of tea before I go.

I said, well, what time have you got to leave? She said about half seven, quarter to eight, something like that. I said, but the X Factor will still be on. Can you not just have a cup of tea in the kitchen on your own? And she gave me a look, which I think I got a sense that maybe I'd said the wrong thing.

And I tried to turn it into a joke. I said, and maybe you can drink the tea on the toilet while you do everything else. And she didn't find that funny.

And we ended up having an arm wrestle and she won. I still got to see most of the X Factor. And just as she was leaving, she said, oh, by the way, what is my name? I said, well, I was at this point, I was looking at telly.

I'm thinking, cause my memory, I don't always remember names very well. And I think the pressure of trying to remember something, my mind kind of went a bit blank. And this is where everything came together nicely.

I said, of course I remember your name. I turned around to smile at her to let her know that, give it a look really, that means it doesn't matter about names. It's about love.

It's about kindness. It's about, you know, all the other things that we're supposed to have. And luckily she had a uniform on, which had a name badge.

And it got me out of a very awkward situation. And that's a short version of that story. The long version involves marshmallows and quite a lot of lemonade.

So yeah, again, I think possibly come to the end of this thing, whatever it is, let me bore you to sleep. And it's just me talking. I'm going to go and have myself something to eat.

A little, a little nibble, a little bit of chocolate, maybe just for me. So that's it. Take care of yourselves and I will speak to you next time.

Lots of love. Bye.