#101 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (25th February 2019)

Hello and welcome to Jason Newland dot com. My name is Jason... I'm bored already before I even... Just the same introduction every time. Welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep.

My name is Jason Newland. So yeah, this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep 101. So we passed a century, ladies and gentlemen.

We passed a century. So here's to another hundred episodes. And this has been going for a year, pretty much.

Yeah, I think I started it about a year ago, probably February, March, time last year. And it's now the end of February 2019. So please only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes.

And if you are watching on YouTube, please only watch when you can safely close your eyes. And please subscribe. And I'd like to thank... I'm going to move some stuff around.

I'd like to thank those of you both on podcasts, you know, listen to me on a podcast, wherever it may be. iTunes, Spotify, whether you're listening on my website, Jason Newland dot com, or whether you're watching videos on YouTube. Thank you.

Thank you for your support. And thank you for getting me here to the 101st episode. Because I'll be honest with you, if no one had been listening to these, I would have quit ages ago.

And by quit, I wouldn't have quit doing the audio recordings. I just wouldn't have continued with these particular ones, you know, the let me bore you to sleep. Because, you know, I've done seasons, I've done specific things in the past, lots of different ones like healing words.

What's it? Hypno chats, hypnotic buffet. So I've done these daily hypnosis, I've done these things where, you know, I thought maybe I'll continue doing them for a long time. And I've done some of them for a few months.

And then it's not so much that people weren't listening because they were. And on YouTube, I was getting quite a few views for the hypnotic buffets and hypno chats in the past. But because most of a lot of my podcast, most of my podcasts are on Spreaker.

And I get to see the really kind of detailed statistics. And I've kind of seen how the audience has increased. And daily, it's increasing.

And so it's really good. I'm really appreciating that. And another thing is my SoundCloud podcast is back online.

I didn't actually delete the podcast. I canceled it so that it was going to run out in three days time. And I contacted most of my followers on there to tell them to go to Spreaker.

And I made all the sessions private so people couldn't listen to anything and just put a big banner saying go to Spreaker with a link. Well, since yesterday or the day before, I've uploaded nearly a thousand. I didn't realize I had that many recordings.

So it's 955 or something recordings that I've uploaded to SoundCloud. And it's all up and running again. It was still up and running, just there wasn't anything to listen to.

So I put everything on to private as well as deleting quite a lot. So now I've just re-uploaded everything. And it's going to look a bit weird because I had 51,000 plays on there.

And now when you look at it, it's going to think, wait a minute, how come there's 51,000 plays? Then you look at some of the audios and there's only two or three plays on each one. It's like, so as I've uploaded them, I've had about nearly 3,000, I think, plays in the last couple of days. But that's pretty normal when I sort of upload new stuff to SoundCloud.

Yeah, a lot of, I don't know why actually, but I seem to get a lot of plays quite quickly. But it's mildly boring, isn't it, to tell you about that. I think I did the 55th episode of Deep Sleep Whisper Hypnosis.

So that's my 55th. So only 45 away from the 100 I met one, which is just over, sort of the end of the month. So that'll be April.

By April, I might have hit the 100, which will be weird. But then by April, I might have 130 or whatever of these. So it'd be interesting to see.

I don't know how many days, so we'll see February now, with the end, I think it's the 25th or the 26th of February 2019. I'll be honest, I lose track of the days. I spent a lot of the day in bed today, which is a little bit wasteful because it's been, statistically, it's been the hottest day in February that we've ever had in this country since records began.

They love doing, they are, the news and the weather loves that, don't they? Oh, this is the, all the way through January, this is the hottest day of the year. This is the coldest day of the year. It's like, yeah, it's the 1st of January.

Of course, it's the hottest day of the year. It's going to be the hottest, the coldest, the windiest, the wettest, everything. It's the 1st of January.

The most poos have been done of the year. You know, the most food's been eaten of the year. It's the 1st of the month of the 1st of the year.

It's 1st of January. The most showers have had been done in the year. You know, just, okay, I'll stop.

I'll stop now. I've calmed down. All right, back on track.

It's fine. Everything's fine. So yeah, apparently today, or yeah, still, still, still is Monday.

It's about half 10 in the evening. When I finish recording this, it's very, what, that you'd probably be interested in. I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I'm going to eat some ice cream and watch The Walking Dead, this week's edition, which just came out tonight.

So yeah, that's, that's my plan. That's going to be my little reward for, you know, sometimes I can't be bothered to make a recording, but when I start, it's just, it's fairly, comes together fairly nicely, usually. Although someone said to me the other day that this is just easy.

It doesn't take any effort to do these recordings and I'm putting no effort in. And there's effort involved. There's, I don't know, there's this effort after the event.

There's the production, you know, it's the editing side, although to be honest, the editing involves a lot of effort. So I'm going to do this. While I upload the audio to Spreaker, I'm using the Spreaker app to record this.

I've got a microphone on my label, my label, my labia, not my labia, but you know, what, what is it, the bit at the top of your, um, uh, like near your neck, you know, the, of your top. It's not a labia, is it? Is it a label? Label? Patel? Label? Well, the microphone basically clips on there. I mean, it doesn't have to go there.

I could put it on my socks, but I wouldn't be able to hear myself probably. And that attaches to the phone and, uh, use the app to record. I can record live, so I can stream live.

Uh, but I don't do that too often just because I don't need the added pressure, to be fair. You know, if someone knocks at the door, I can press, I can continue recording, go and see the person and then come back and just edit it out at the end. I can't, can't do that if I'm live and it's just easier.

I just, I prefer to just relax, you know? So I upload it to Spreaker and then I download it from Spreaker to my laptop. And then I edit the audio on an audio editing software. And usually all I need to do is just cut the beginning and cut the end, you know, because I always leave a space.

I always leave maybe 10, 15, 20 seconds before I talk. And at the end as well, sometimes I'll mutter some stuff and, you know, cough and just sneezed. I actually, right near the end of your, uh, it was this morning, I did the deep sleep whisper session, 55.

Um, and I was right near the end and I could feel a sneeze coming on. And I thought, well, I could just end this, but it wasn't the right time to end it because today's session was more of a chat and talk, a guidance rather than a natural, um, you know, some of the recordings I do, the deep sleep ones, there's the whisper ones is, it ends with me like, well, I'm always whispering, but it ends with a real kind of gentle ending. I'm not saying that sometimes, you know, I do different endings.

I don't have like a drum roll or anything, you know, symbols that don't do anything like that. But sometimes I'll say goodbye. Thank you.

See you next time. I don't do it so much on them ones, but sometimes I do. And today was one of those times when I was going to sort of come to an end and say, see you next time, or just, you know, wind it down.

But a sneeze, it was a proper, it was really loud, but not, it wasn't a sprayy one. It wasn't, you know, when you stand in the beach and the, the waves, you know, the waves are coming and you get the spray from the, from the, from the sea. And sometimes you don't get the, you don't get any spray at all.

It was like that. It was just, it's like it was an internal, it was external. And then it kind of internally went, internal sneeze.

I don't know what that was about. I kind of sneezed inside myself. You know, years ago, I remember, I think it was about 19, probably early nineties, it was in the paper saying that sneezing is like having an orgasm.

No, it's not. That's what I've got to say on that one. Like having, you only really, yeah, you might have to wipe yourself afterwards, but that's, other than that, it's not, it's not, it's a, you know, I've sneezed, we've all sneezed and yeah, you get, it can be nice, but you know, I never had to light a cigarette after sneezing.

Even when I used to smoke, I don't now, but when I did, I never used to have to light a cigarette, like sneeze like two or three times, like, oh, where's the lighter? Oh, I need to, no, never. It was never just, so yeah. I'm trying to rewind.

I don't know where I got on to sneezing. Oh, yeah, I sneezed during this recording. It was right at the end.

I had to edit it out. Luckily, with such things like coughing or sneezing or, you know, any kind of loud sounds, it shows up on the audio by looking at it. You can see the, the up and down of the audio.

I don't know if that makes sense, but you can see there's a big spike when it comes to like a sneeze or a cough or any other noises made from the body. And there's some noises I just leave in, but when it comes to sneezes, it's a little bit, it was a little bit too, well, especially if I'm doing this, I'm doing a whisper recording. I'm like, and then you can whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper.

And then suddenly you hear a sneeze, like a massive sneeze. It's, yeah, I don't think it would have been very good. So I edit it out.

I always feel so tired when I do these recordings. So I edited it out and I do the fade in at the beginning, fade out at the end. I'm learning, learning a few little tricks along the way when it comes to editing stuff.

Things that I've not learned, but I've come across by accident, you know, I thought, oh, that's interesting. I never really, so using a tool for something other than what it's supposed to be used for, or, you know, or I hadn't thought about using it for something different. So it's, uh, I suppose it's kind of similar to using a fork to the first person that thought, you know what, I can actually use a fork to, to mash potato.

Don't need a potato masher. I'm not a big fan of potato mashers. You know, the ones with the handles and the metal ones, not some, not so bad.

I don't mind the metal ones as such, but the plastic ones, if you also, I reckon if you went around the country, any country that has potatoes, um, I don't know if all countries do have potatoes, uh, or even have mashed potatoes, you have to let me know. Just leave a comment. Cause I know that people from all around the world are listening to this.

If you don't have mashed potato where you live, I don't mean you can't buy where you can buy mashed potato, but in packets in supermarkets, you can actually buy mashed potato and heat it up. But you know, when I say mashed potato, it's not something that you, you pick off a tree. It's, it's, uh, but if you don't have mashed potato where you live, then leave a comment.

Um, and while you're at it, you know, maybe tell me how great I am. I'm going to keep on about that. I'm going to try and coax people into saying that they like me.

Just pretend, just pretend. So pretend it's a relationship and you can use forks to do the mashed potato. And it's a bit scrapey.

It's a bit scratchy, you know, to the saucepan. It's a little bit scratchy and scrapey. You know, it's just, you might wear the saucepan out a little bit quicker than it would have ordinarily have been worn out.

And you might have a few little bits of, I don't know, the, you know, stuff that stops the food from sticking. The saucepan, maybe you'll have a little bit of that material in mixed in with your food, but, um, other than that, it's, you know, forks are quite good for mashed potato. I don't know about big forks.

I quite like forks that are thin, but I'm just thinking, cause you know, you can get forks that are thin, you get those other forks that are quite, I want to say, it's like, not arthritic, but they just quite stumpy, quite big, swollen kind of forks. I think they're quite old fashioned. And you can get the really thin, thin forks that are just, then you can get forks that are quite, that are sort of somewhere in between.

The forks I've got at the moment, yeah, they're not, they're not expensive. They're pretty cheap. I don't have anything that's expensive.

I think it's, everything I've got is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty cheap. I don't have a lot of, it's just, you make do, don't you? You make do in life. It's, if you can't afford a Ferrari, then you get a car that you can afford.

Cause, I wonder why that's why Ford did so well, cause it sounds like a Ford. I can afford that. Can you afford that? Yeah, I can afford that.

It's like Misty Aoff. Yeah, I can afford that car. I, um, I don't drive.

I had driving lessons. Is it, it's going to, I don't know. I can't even tell you this, but I had a lesson.

I had driving lessons with two different places. And one was in London when I lived in London as a young man, a very, very, very young man, 20 years old, I think I was at the time. And because in London and I'm being, um, I don't know, generalizing.

Cause nothing's always anything, is it? But, uh, in London, where I used to live, the roads weren't big. They were, some of them were long, but they weren't very wide. Yet there was cars parked both sides.

So it was a case of driving. And only one car could get down at a time and other cars had to wait. And there's a constant like giving way to each other.

So you could actually get down the road, which is, I think, a really rubbish way to, to live really. But I suppose people get used to it, don't they? That's what they're used to. You get used to the things you're used to.

And, but I did it and I thought, you know what? This is rubbish. I mean, where I lived, I could walk to work quicker than the bus traveled. I could actually walk and the bus would be ahead of me.

And then I'd walk past the bus as it was stuck in traffic. And I'd get to where I was going before the bus even got there. It's, you know, it's really, it's handy if you don't want to walk, obviously, or if you're, you know, you need to sit down and buses are great in that situation.

But where I live now, I live like 10 miles away from anything. The nearest town is like about 10 miles away. So it's too far to walk.

I've done it. I have walked it, but I didn't get that little tingly feeling of accomplishment you thought I might have done. Didn't really, no.

It's a lot. Also, I get a bit sweaty sometimes. You know, when I'm walking and I got a big jacket on and even though it's cold, I need the jacket on, but it's like this, there's a whole different, I don't know, it's like there's a different terrain going on inside the jacket.

So outside the jacket is like, you know, two degrees or really three degrees, four degree, you know, maybe minus even. So it's cold outside, but inside it's, it's very strange. It's, you know, it's like being, it's like it's the North pole outside, but inside I'm kind of in Australia and it's really warm and my armpits are like little beaches and barbecues and stuff.

So it's a different climate and it's not, not very pleasant because I'm going to get, I get to where I'm going, take my hat off, I've been sweating. It looks like I just got out of the shower. It doesn't because if, if I look like that, people would run.

Plus I don't wear my hat in the shower. Imagine wearing a hat in a shower. And you might say, yeah, what about a shower hat? What about a shower hat? Well then watch, they're called shower caps, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, but hats are called caps, caps and hats.

Similar thing, isn't it? Because it goes on your head, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Caps and hats and pats and whacks. I mean, you're just sounding silly now.

I know. I can help it. Okay.

Bye then. So yeah, I don't like the plastic potato meshes because if you, what my point was going to be, if you travelled all around the country and you went into 10,000 houses, yeah, and collected 10,000 potato meshes, plastic ones, it would take ages. It would take forever.

Now, if you did that, maybe not 10,000, let's say a thousand, say a thousand, say a hundred even. It doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to go all out. It could be a hundred or maybe a thousand, 500.

I bet you those plastic potato meshes will have bits in them. Those holes will have bits. They won't be clean.

They won't be kind of cleanliness that you'd expect. They will look a bit like a teenager's in between a teenager's toes. I say teenager, I'm just remembering myself when I was a teenager.

I constantly had black bits in between my toes. My feet stunk. It was terrible.

And I haven't had black bits between my toes since I've been an adult. But when I was a teenager, it's like fungus was growing. Now I'm not saying that everybody that has a plastic mashed potato or potato mesher has fungus growing in the holes or in between the holes of the potato mesher.

I'm not saying that, okay, because that might be considered rude. And, you know, if there's one thing I'm not, and that's considerate. So I don't want to be, you know, saying that, but, you know, I've got one and you can't get rid of the stuff.

It's stuck. Seriously, if we ever run out of cement, use mashed potato. We could build houses, pyramids.

Why would we want to build pyramids? Why? What was even the point of building pyramids? Do you think they just built them for, you know, one day people are going to look at these? I reckon pyramids were built by somebody that didn't really know what he was doing. I think there's someone that just like, it was one of those, you know, like, like a bridge that just collapses, you know, it's like, that was wrong. We really can't believe we gave him the job.

Sorry, Bob, you're going to have to go back to road sweeping. Those houses that you built. The pointy ones? Yes, the pointy ones, but not really any good.

Why not? They're pointy. Yeah, I know they're pointy. They have no windows.

But they're pointy. Okay, fair enough. There's a pointy mop there.

Going pointy. Yeah, okay. So yeah.

So it's, I don't think pyramids really, you know, wonder of the world, mistake of the world, I'd say, possibly. I don't know. Pointy.

You know, where's the windows? Where's the driveway? Where's the door? Where's the garden? I mean, it's in a desert. There's no garden. I mean, yeah, kids love sandpits.

But at some point, no matter how much you love a sandpit, you want to get out of the sandpit and go and do something else. You don't live in the sandpit. You don't want to sleep in the sandpit.

You just want to play in the sandpit, then get out and do something else. So yeah, I think sand is not the best garden. I might be wrong, though.

If you live in a place where you've got sand everywhere, then here's a question. If you do live somewhere where there's sand everywhere, so if you do live in a desert, if you're listening to this and you live in a desert, do you ever make sandcastles? I don't know. I'm just wondering.

Again, you can leave a little comment. Just let me know. If you live in the desert, and that doesn't have to necessarily mean it could be anywhere.

It could be Arizona. They've got deserts in different parts of the world, haven't they? Arabia. Tennessee.

I don't know. France. I don't know if they've got deserts in France.

Deserts in Belgium. I went to Belgium once. Actually, I went to Belgium three times, I think.

Twice. Oh, we went there when I was a kid on a ferry. Yep, we didn't swim.

It was on a ferry and it was the Belgium ferry. Andre's awakened. He's running around now.

If you want to see a cute picture, I just posted a picture of Andre on my Facebook page. He was asleep. It's just part of his face hanging out of his bag.

I said I was wrong, part of his face. His face is intact, but just the way he was just... Have a look at it. He's asleep.

He's very cute. He's very cute. He's been very tactile with me lately.

A lot more so. I'm not quite sure why. Earlier, I was having a little sleep.

Probably between 6.30 and 8, something like that. I just went and laid down for a little bit and he was asleep. I was only partly asleep, but I heard him just run into the bedroom and he jumped onto the bed.

He started to sniff me like he does. He started to nibble at my fingers, in between my thumb and my first finger. He likes that little bit of meat in between them.

He likes to nibble on that a little bit and lick that. He started licking my lips. He just wanted me to be awake.

He wanted me to, I suppose, do something. He started biting my eyes, like the top of my eye. Not biting, just nibbling, just gently.

If he bit me, I'd be in hospital. He just nibbles very, very gently, but it's a very sensitive area, to be fair. I gave him a cuddle.

As soon as I did that, he tries to get away. He wants everything on his terms. He does.

So I just grabbed him and I wouldn't let go and he'd go, like that. Which I think is, get off. What do you want? Go away.

I sometimes think he's waiting for me just to die so he can eat me. That's what he does when he climbs on the bed, just nibbling, just to see if I react. If not, then he can go and get his knife and fork.

Bless him. So I went to Belgium. Yeah, twice.

The first time, I was very young. Went with my dad. Went with the family, basically.

My step-mom, not a fan of boats. Really not a fan of boats. She shared her disapproval with being on the boat with the sea.

She spent a lot of time talking to the sea, it hanging over the side of the boat. So yeah, I don't know what she was talking about. But now Andre's climbing on me now.

I just have to move the phone out of the way so he doesn't get onto it. What do you want, mate? No, you can't go on the microphone. You've got to behave yourself.

Yes, you do. Are you going to lick my, in between my thumb and my finger? He's usually okay, but I've got a friend who does that with, and he bites. He really bites hard.

Oh, he's a new thing now, because he's got a girlfriend, and basically his girlfriend is an old slipper of mine. But that's, I've talked about this before, it's the head and shoulders of his girlfriend. And he's very creative, and he finds something else to use as the lower body, which is probably no different to what a dog does.

It's just, it's kind of the same kind of thing. But there's something about the slipper, this, he just actually tries him, he's got a relationship with that slipper. So sometimes he uses carrier bags for the bottom half, and he scrunches it all up and just spends ages, sometimes up to an hour, doing his thing.

But recently he started using one of his cuddly toys. He just did a little sneeze there. And it's a little blue toy that I bought him, I can't remember when.

He's got loads of toys dotted all over the place. And he started using the blue toy as the body of his girlfriend. And I just, I don't know why, but I just thought that was so cute.

It's the, it's as if he like brought home his first girlfriend, you know? It's like, Daddy, I'd like you to meet Sarah. Oh, hello, Sarah. Hello.

I'm just going to go and take Sarah into the bedroom and introduce her to Polly. Who's Polly? That's the, Polly's head, that's my girlfriend's head. Sarah's my girlfriend's body.

Oh, okay. Polly, because maybe it's a polyamorous relationship. Oh, I love, I don't like puns at all.

I don't, I'm really a non-pun person. I don't really like them. I don't dislike them, I just don't.

I did one though, actually, that I was quite pleased with. It was a few months back. I was with my friend and I think we were trying to say, well, what is the name of this person, celebrity or something? And he said, is her surname Eva? Which is the best way to say it, is it Eva? I said, and I came back quick as a flash, about 10 minutes later.

I don't know, Eva or either. It was fine. I felt really good about myself.

Three, three seconds, I reckon. Don't really do puns, but that was kind of like a punny, a punny-ish kind of moment. I think if you do puns, you need to, or to appreciate puns, you kind of need to be a student of the English language or whatever language you talk.

Because I'm sure there's puns in other languages as well. I'm sure it's not just an English thing. Or that might be, I don't know.

And I'm not really a student of anything. So, I know enough words to get by, but I definitely could not, I could not teach English. I don't think.

I don't know. Could, no, I don't. Although, you know, I do.

What did someone say once that the best way, the best universal language is love. So if you, if you're in love with somebody, you can learn their language much easier than by any books or courses, because you really want to understand what they're talking about and what they're saying. That's why I've had a few girlfriends that have been from other countries.

So I find the relationship lasts a lot longer when the person I'm with doesn't know what I'm saying. Once they start to understand what I'm talking about, I usually kind of, it's the end of the relationship. But I usually get a good few weeks in.

Some people say communications is the backbone of any relationship. Wow. It's really weird.

Just as you said that, Andres come in holding his girlfriend's head, the slipper, and he makes that noise. Did you hear that? I don't know if you could hear that in the background. It's funny.

Very funny. Some of the sounds that he makes. And you know, cause he's a big boy now, he's over three years old.

And what's it, August, September, October, November, December, January, three and a half, but he still squeaks, still squeaks like really like high pitched. And I'm kind of waiting for his voice to break. I don't think it's ever going to happen.

You know, I think of him as like a big boy cause he was so tiny when I got him. And now he's long, he's big, he's heavy. And he's not big, but you know, he's big compared to what he was.

And when I tread on him, you know, I've got to catch him sometimes, but when I get to tread on him, I don't, I don't purposely do it, but he's, he's just like squeaks and, uh, or just generally when he's like playing with me or he wants me to let him go or like, you just kind of squeaky. That's cute. This doesn't, it doesn't suit him because he's too old now.

I just thought his voice would break. I thought it, you know, when I was a kid, when I was little, had a dog and I feel it was mainly just my dad wanted to appease his wife and wanted to, he got a dog, I suppose. Either that or he wanted a dog.

I don't know. But he got like, he got a St. Bernard, which is that, for, if you're going to get a dog, for a first dog, a St. Bernard is probably not the first, the best choice. If it's your first ever dog, because you, you need to, you need some preparation for that.

And I think, I'm not saying, I'm not, I'm not comparing getting a St. Bernard puppy with, uh, doing a triamphalon. Is it triamphalon? Triathlon? Or, you know, the Olympics. It's not, it's not the same as competing in an Olympic, an Olympic, uh, competition.

But the point is, if you're going to compete in the Olympics, you need to have some kind of preparation beforehand. You know, some smaller contests leading up to the Olympics, learning the basics, you know, but then training probably for years and years before you get to that level. A St. Bernard's, it's an understatement to say, and you might call them St. Bernard's.

It's an understatement to say that they are big dogs because they are huge, huge dogs. The weight of an adult, the weight of a big, large adult, you know, probably within about a year of, um, that's my finger, by the way. Bit of a sound effects there.

And we had a big house. We did have a big, I mean, there's a lot of us who needed it. There was, there was only one room that wasn't being used most of the time.

One spare bedroom because that, that was just for visitors and stuff. But we had, how many bedrooms was it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So there was seven bedrooms.

And then as, as things changed, it got to the point where, because one of the bedrooms was being used as a games room. And my little brother, he had the little room and I had another room downstairs. And then my two older brothers were upstairs.

But then the little room became like an office or a solarium. I think it was like a sunbed in there. I never went under the sunbed.

Um, but I think that's, yeah, there was a sunbed in there. I'm pretty sure. And my little brother moved into the room that I was in before.

So it was a bigger room. Plus he was little, he needed more space to play and stuff. And I moved upstairs into my oldest brother's room and he moved next door into the bigger room.

And then, you know, it was a shame to lose that playroom because that was quite cool. You had a table, tennis table in there and pool and snooker table. And, uh, it was all one thing.

Not, not like it wasn't like, uh, transformers, you know, just transformed into different things. There was a snooker table, not full size. It wasn't that big, but it was still a nice size.

But the table, tennis table was built specifically so that it fitted over the top of the snooker table. Sounds like I was rich, doesn't it? Yeah. So let's go.

Should we go to the snooker room? Shall we? Yeah. Had a brandy. It wasn't quite like that.

Um, brandy. I think I had brandy once. I used to work with this bloke and he was from, from Jamaica.

And he, he was a bit like, uh, he kind of took me under his wing a bit. Cause he was just really, he was probably in his fifties and he was wise. And for me, it was like a wise old man.

Cause I was like maybe 22, 23. And he said, cheers son. I said, you're right Alf, Alfie or whatever his name was.

You calm down, man. Have a brandy. And I said, all right.

Then he said, no, I haven't actually got a brandy on me. When you go home, try a brandy. So I did cause I really liked him and he used to calm me down.

Cause I used to be a little bit of a, a bit, uh, a little bit full on maybe sometimes when I was younger and he used to kind of bring me down to a very calm. I liked him a lot. And he said, and he'd give me these little wise sayings and he's, uh, what'd he say? Uh, don't, yeah, don't, don't walk too fast so that you end up treading on the other person's feet.

I said, okay. So get off my feet, please. No, he didn't say that.

Uh, but I don't know what he said. I can't remember anything. Uh, but I did try brandy like in his out of, I suppose, kind of respect for him just cause I did be, so I really liked him.

And so I had this brandy and it just was weird. It's not really fun. I'm not really a spirits person, like alcoholic spirits and love poltergeist, but I'm not really into brandy.

Whiskey can't do. I'll tell you about that another time. That's a big story about that.

But brandy, no, I've never had a bad, it didn't have a bad experience with it. I just, I tried it out. I got like a little half bottle or quarter or whatever.

Um, definitely warmed up my cockles. Um, but other than that, so I went to Belgium and we got there and it took so long to get there and the weather was so choppy that we didn't end up going off the boat. We just came straight back.

So that, that was the first journey. The second journey, I went in 1988 and I went with some friends from, well, people I worked with. I worked in this warehouse.

Um, well I worked in a company that did, that made electric meters. And my job, my first job there was, cause I worked there three times, was to pack meters. So I put the meters in the boxes, doing it by number, you know, so crossing them off and, and then putting them onto a pallet, uh, spin wrapping the pallet, uh, you know, making the boxes, all that kind of stuff.

Uh, loading, unloading lorries and, you know, anything pretty much involved in the job. And so we all decided, a few of us went, let's go to Belgium for the day, one Saturday or Sunday. So we did it.

We all went up and it was quite weird because there's probably about five or six of us, I think. And I've never been the most traveled person. And that was my first time abroad ever, that I'd actually set foot on, uh, I was going to say foreign soil, but you know, you know, outside of my own country.

And well, I had been to Wales and Scotland and Newcastle. I did end up going to Ireland, but that was later on, uh, when I was 24. So yeah, I went to Belgium and there was a couple of incidences.

One was, we went to, to town. Is it Zeebrugge? Zeebrugge? Oh, I don't know. And we were walking down some roads and one of the lads was walking further ahead or he turned a corner and he started yelling.

And we're like, what's going on? He said, look. And he was, he came running up to us and said, there's a lady in the window and she's naked. And, uh, so that was, obviously we all went and had a look.

No, she, she wasn't naked. She was, she had, uh, had, uh, she had clothes on, but not, not a lot. And I was like, I didn't know what to make of all that stuff because we don't have that kind of thing in England.

Um, as far as I know. And so that was interesting. And then we carried on.

We got a burger in a place and it was like an ice cream place. It was really nice, but the food was raw. The burgers were raw, which was a bit weird.

I don't know if it's, you know, I'm used to cooked food. So that was a bit, I'm not sure if we got ill. I can't remember.

But then on the ferry back and I don't know what happened. There must be something in the water, but the, yeah, I think it was in the cinema. We were all watching the film and people started trashing the place.

And it was like a big, um, very unusual, a lot of, uh, weirdness occurred on the trip back. So it was quite a good trip. It was quite fun.

Quite liked it. Um, one of the things I always liked, uh, even when I went to Ireland, I went there, I suppose, four trips, four, four ferry trips, you know, there and back twice. No, there and back.

Yeah. There and back twice. Um, I loved being on the ferry as it was leaving England and seeing the throth of the propeller, you know, behind the ship.

And just, I remember when I was younger, I used to feel the, I think, especially when I went to France. So I went from Dover to France in 1989 and I could just feel the tension leaving me as always, just sailing away from Dover. But that might be more to do with Dover than anything else.

I don't know. It was so nice just to be moving away, going somewhere different, somewhere new to a new land. All right, I'm going to go.

Hopefully this has been nice and boring for you. I'll speak to you next time. Bye.