#118 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (28th March 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. I don't know what number it is but it's a number. It's one of many.

I'm really not sure. I must be getting up to about 120 by now. So only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes as you may get bored.

And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. And also if you'd like to support this free service that I've been providing since 2006, then please go to paypal.me forward slash jasonnuland and you can make a little donation. Help me to support and pay for the costs, the running costs which come to just over £100 a month presently.

The links will be in the video and the links also on my website. Also just to let you know that all on my website, every single of the latest recordings are all there. So even if there's a little bit of a lull between me making an audio and converting it into a video, because it takes quite a few hours to do, the audio is still available first.

So it's always up to date. So now, now, now, now. The point behind these recordings is I just, I just talk.

I just talk. There's not anything particularly interesting about what I say and that's kind of the point. That I just talk about whatever and you can just, if you choose, you can close your eyes and just drift off to sleep through complete and utter boredom.

So if you want excitement then maybe maybe you watch a movie or I don't know if that would work, would it? Let me excite you to sleep. It's, yeah, it's like trying to, you know, when you're a kid and Christmas or maybe a birthday, the next day you're trying to get to sleep and you're excited about the presents. Let's face it, that's what Christmas is about for a lot of kids.

And you can't sleep because you just want to, oh, presents, what am I getting? Please don't let it be a bag of coal again. No, I want a proper present. I used to worry a little bit about, so we're in England, we call him Father Christmas, but in America, call him Santa Claus.

Although the, I think the young people in now say Santa Claus instead of Father Christmas. But when I was a kid, he was Father Christmas. And Santa was, and Santa, it could be both, but Father Christmas was the, I mean, it's Saint Nicholas, isn't it? The actual person that that person's named after.

Well, anyway, I wasn't really sure how Father Christmas was going to get into my house. Because I remember one Christmas, I said to my dad, how does he get in? And my dad said, what do you mean, how does he get in? And I said, why are you talking like that, dad? He said, I don't know. Had a few too many Scotches and I thought it'd be funny, but it didn't really work out that way.

So I'll just talk normally now. I said, okay. I said, how does he get in? How does Father Christmas get into the house? He said, he comes down the chimney.

I said, but you block the chimney up, remember? Because in the eighties, there was a bit of a ban on coal. Not a ban on coal, but it was more because of the pollution and the smog. The government didn't really want people using chimneys as much.

And I partly made that up. I think it's true. And the reason why he blocked up the chimney is because all the heat was just going straight out because he didn't have the fire on all the time.

It was more of a, I don't know, like a, not a hobby, but I love fires, not house fires, but I love fires in a mental piece in a chimney, like fireplaces. I like bonfires as well. They're nice.

Something quite hypnotic about the, I think it's a mixture of things. It's the visual. You've kind of got everything, haven't you? You've got the visual of the flames.

You've got the sound of the crackling of the wood or whatever's being like crackling with the flames. And you've got the smell of the wood and the fire, that familiar smell, but then you've also got the heat. So you kind of, all your senses, and you can also kind of taste it as well.

So you've got all the senses in, you know, happening at the same time, being stimulated. And so I used to really like the fire when we had one. And we lived in an old house.

So there was a fireplace. I think there might be in a, yeah, I don't know. Again, I might be making this up because I do like to lie.

Pretty sure there was fireplaces upstairs as well, not just downstairs. So I don't know if it was connected to the fire, but a chimney was connected all the way up from the bottom to the top. I guess it would be to the top because it has to go to the roof, doesn't it? It's not going to end up in one of the bedrooms.

But anyway, what we found is the smoke would sometimes get into other parts of the house when it was being used, when it was being lit because of the wind. And also sometimes if the fireplace wasn't being used, you know, it'd just be unused but would have the heating on. But then the fireplace would kind of just suck the heat out.

It'd suck it right. So it'd suck the heat off really basically, just suck it right out of the room. And I guess, you know, from an adult perspective, that was, it was a financial issue.

You know, for me, I didn't really have much in the way of money. And, you know, the important thing to do with money was to buy suites and comics. So, you know, maybe books.

I did quite like to read books. Yeah, but I did make use of the library. I used to love my library.

I did. I was a proper, proper bookie when I was a kid. I'd be in the library sometimes every day.

And I loved the new books. Sometimes I'd take a new book out just because it was new. And just the smell, I'd be going around smelling the books, which is something you can get away with.

Doesn't work so much in a bicycle shop, you know. But it's, you know, it's that fresh print smell. Oh, excuse me.

I'll have to have a drink. My throat is a bit raw. Ah, that's better.

So, my dad sealed the fireplace, sealed the chimney so that the heat from the house couldn't be sucked off by the chimney because of the, you know, the cost. Because it was a big house. I mean, how many rooms were there? So, you'd go into the house.

On the right hand side is one room. There was two rooms, but he knocked through one into the other to make one big room. But it was more of the doorway, so it still felt like there was two rooms.

And both the rooms had doorways into them as well, because they were two separate rooms, but they both still had the doorways. And then there was, you know, he knocked through the wall to make it a bit bigger, so he could get through to either side. And there was, yeah, you could get through there into the garden.

There was like a door. You know those white doors they're not really, they are doors, but they're not. They're sort of more conservatory kind of doors that open out into the garden.

They're not like normal wooden doors. Yeah, he had one of them and opened. I'm not sure if, I think it opened in the middle, so it kind of had two parts to it.

That's what I recollect. However, it didn't really go didn't use it much. I think it might have been open during the summer.

I mean, not all the time, obviously, but at times during the summer. And so different days, different days, different rooms we had. So I would class that as two rooms.

If a room, I think a room is a room if it's got a door that goes into it, even if it's open, plan to another room. That's what I think anyway. And so there's them two rooms, then you go through on the right hand side, there is a toilet.

I think it was also the washrooms. I think it had a washing machine in there as well, I think. And, oh, my throat's really playing up.

I have to have another drink. I like drinking water, by the way. The amount of times, actually, I'm going to leave the lid off.

I'll see if I can, yeah, make sure I don't spill it though. The amount of times that I have took the lid off a bottle of water and lost the lid. It falls on the floor and it just, I'm guessing because it's round, if it lands on its side, it can roll, can't it? If it just landed flat, then it should pretty much just stay where it lands.

Maybe it might bounce a little bit, but not, wouldn't be like bouncing up to the ceiling and back, you know, knocking over furniture. It's just a little lid, a little plastic lid on a bowl. But if it lands on its side, it could roll.

I suppose it could roll in a straight line, but sometimes cylinder kind of things roll in a kind of a circle, don't they? And then stop, like a coin or something like that, maybe. I don't know really. But, so there's the toilet, so that's three rooms.

Then we walked into another room, which was like, it was the, so we called the sitting room the first room we went into. That was the sitting room. That's what, you know, the settees and sofas and stuff was, and television.

The other room that's connected to it was, had a big table and it was the living room, but it was like the good living room. It's where we would go for, you know, special dinners, Christmas, birthdays. Sometimes we'd do Sundays there as well.

So the other room would be, again, another table where we would eat meals. Then we go into kitchen. That's the next room.

So it's that one, two, three, four, five. And there was another room that was a toilet, but it was outside and that was converted into a, like a seating area to eat as well. It's like part of the kitchen, but extended.

And I think I've talked about that before. Basically we were eating in a toilet, which was nice. Try not to think about all the different people that might have emptied themselves in that space where we were filling ourselves with food, sausages and, you know, whatever.

So, and the kitchen was, it was a nice kitchen and it was a sink and microwave, cooker, counters, cupboards, you know, just general kitchen-y stuff. So that was the bottom of the house. So that's where, how many rooms is that? One, two, three, four, five.

Five rooms. And this, with the seating, that's still classed as the kitchen. So it's five.

And then going upstairs, straight ahead, there was a room that didn't really get used that much. Had an airing cupboard in it, a storage area, but it was used for my, you know, for visitors and stuff. And then there was the bathroom.

See, I class bathrooms as rooms because they do have the word room after bath. So a toilet's still a room. And I know it's not, ain't actually anyone that says you can't fall asleep on a toilet.

Of course, everyone, anyone can. It's, don't like that, the numb legs though. You know, you wake up like, oh, the legs are all numb.

I don't mind the numbness. It's the, it's the, like the pins and needles as the legs kind of come back to life. So it's a little bit annoying.

So what was I going to say? Oh yeah. So I went, there was other rooms. There's that one, the spare one, the bathroom, the toilet, there's another toilet next to it.

There's also a toilet in the bathroom, but you need that because there is quite a few of us living there as well. The two adults, my three brothers and me. So that's where everyone is at then, four, six people.

So you need three toilets for six people because think about it, chances are at least half the people are going to want to do a poo or a wee at some point. It just makes sense, doesn't it? And so I quite liked it when we had an outside toilet as well, just for emergencies, you know. Also there was a toilet down the bottom of the garden as well.

So there was always somewhere to release. So what's it? So one, one, and it's the bathroom, two, toilet, three. Then there was a big room, which I slept in for a while.

My little brother slept in it after me. So that's one, two, three, four. Then there's the parents' room, five.

Then it's the little kind of box room, six, but that was used as a bedroom sometimes. So six there, plus how many downstairs? Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. So it's 11 so far, 11 sort of separate rooms.

Then upstairs, there was three more. So there was kind of a small ish room that had a skylight, you know, that kind of ceiling that was like taking up half of the room, going like slanting down, where you'd be banging your head when you get up, I imagine. I don't think I ever slept in that room.

I might've done, I don't think so. And the room next to it, or like further up, I think there might've been two steps. Up into the next level.

And there was one big room, and it was my room that used to be my brother's room, but I ended up in there. And that was an okay size room. And that was right at the top of the house.

And my window was facing a wall. Literally, there was no light at all coming into that room. It was a wall because it was a semi-detached house.

And I was on the semi-detached side. So it didn't bother me at the time. I didn't really care, but it was very, very dull in there.

And then there was the other room. So that's 11 rooms altogether. But as far as bedrooms go, there was like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

So seven bedrooms. And I don't know if there was any... I just have this memory of there being a fireplace upstairs in the parents' room, and a mental piece. Is it a mental piece? Fireplace piece? The bit that you can put stuff on.

That's kind of maybe face height, chest height kind of thing. Anyway, my dad blocked up all those... He blocked up the fireplaces wherever they were. And in order to, I suppose, keep the heat in.

And it was a very cold house. Very cold. Very honestly.

It was very much like... What was it? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You know, the witch in that. Very much like her heart.

It's very cold. Very, very cold house. And in the summer, it was cool.

You know, in the winter, it was cold. And in the summer, it was all right. It kind of, especially in my room, there was no sun in there.

But I wasn't in that room the whole time. I did go out. I did have to go to school and partake in human activities at times.

And I used to like, I used to like sitting up there and reading and practicing Kung Fu moves and just maybe writing poems or writing songs or attempting to write a story, a book. So I wanted to write a superhero book. But I just didn't really feel inspired to do it.

I just, I think I kind of wanted to write a book for the sake of writing a book. Because I felt, perhaps I felt it's hard to know because it's a long time ago. And I didn't write down on a post-it note as a reminder what I felt at that time.

I think there might have been the case of, I like to read, therefore, the next thing would be to write something. But I never quite did it, you know. And I think I was that as interested as I wanted to be in writing.

I liked learning certain things that I was interested in. And one of the things I used to do was, I used to go to the library when I was going through a particular interest in the paranormal. And I would go and I would study the, you know, the encyclopedia books they had.

The ones that are too big to take out, you know, they have specifically on there, do not remove from the library. You know, in little letters, yes, that includes you, Jason. So I, you know, used to go in there.

What I used to do is I used to take a notepad and I used to copy word for word what was written. And I did that exact same thing when I first got involved in hypnosis and NLP. I used to copy books out, like write kind of a whole book out.

Or sometimes I'd miss out certain bits, but just write out the good bits, the bits that I wanted to remember into a pad. I must've had a lot of time on my hands back then. Yeah.

But I said to my dad, I said, how's Father Christmas going to get in? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you sealed up all of the fireplaces. You sealed them up. How's he supposed to get down and get the presents? And my dad said, don't worry, son.

He used to call me son. I think he, I'm not sure if he knows what my name is, but he always called me son. So it's fine.

And he said, don't worry, son. I've left the front door on the latch. So the front door's open.

He can just come in. Now, I think it's, I think I'm underestimating, being underestimation, if I was to say that when I was a kid, I was a little bit of a worrier. So to tell me that some strange man's going to be letting himself into my house to bring, you know, presents into the house and stuff, you know, I was always quite safety aware.

I couldn't quite work out what's going on there. But luckily we didn't have presents in our bedrooms. They were all in the living room, but downstairs we used to have these big sacks.

And well, I still barricaded my bedroom door, but you know, just standard. The idea of leaving the front door open, what the heck? But one of the rooms, the one next to the piano, and it used to move from one side to the other, not on its own, but it was like quite a heavy, old piano. It wasn't one of those big, massive, you know, like John Lennon, Imagine video, or woman, you know, that kind of massive piano.

But it was one of the standup pianos, the ones that stands against the wall, brown, and had a lid that used to come down onto the keys, or to cover the keys rather, and pedals connected, and a stool, and your legs could fit underneath the actual piano, I think. And there used to be a thing like a metal rack thing where you could put the music. And I did learn a few bits, because when I was a kid, when I was young, young, I learned to play the violin.

And that's when I learned music, you know, the basics. I wasn't, I'm no expert at music. I'm no Justin Bieber, you know.

But I did learn some of the basic chords, which you have to, you know, if you're going to learn an instrument like the violin. And I went to classes, I learnt it, not properly, but I didn't learn it by ear, I used my hands. And I actually went to lessons once or twice a week at school.

This is in junior school, so it's before the age of 11, before the age of 10, in fact, so I must have been about maybe nine. And I didn't, I think it was a case of I wanted to do something, you know, I wanted to do something, but I wasn't really sure what it was I wanted to do. And I, it was a bit of a, I don't know about exciting, but it was a little bit of a buzz, you know, doing something new.

There was this thing and I just had a sponge on it as well, at the bottom of the violin, so that I could, it didn't hurt me while I was holding it against my chin and my neck and just learning the chords and cleaning the bow and, I don't know, cleaning, greasing it up or whatever you call it, you know, the horse hairs. And, you know, it was quite cool because there's quite a lot involved, looking after the violin was important. And then practising the chords, practising a few, you know, bits of music and stuff.

It wasn't until I realised how annoying I was being to the rest of the family that I started to enjoy it. Because I was not a good player. I was, it really was very screechy.

But I think sometimes, if I remember rightly, I would be in my bedroom and I'd be screeching it as loud as possible. And I'd be laughing, laughing so loudly, knowing that it was annoying everybody. You know, they were trying to watch television or whatever they were trying to do.

And the good thing about it is, I had to practise. So it's like one of those things that I was told to do something, I was told off if I didn't do it. So I had to practise every day.

It was awful. It really was. I didn't know what I was doing.

I was making up as I went along. I think now, if I was with the day that we, you know, the life and the technology that we have, I probably made a recording, a digital recording of me playing like the worst possible sound. And I just would have played that on loudspeakers and climbed out the window and had a picnic on the roof or something.

I don't know. Not that I would condone eating sandwiches on the roof. I find cakes much more fun.

I haven't had sandwiches for ages. I used to go through a phase when I just eat sandwiches all the time. So much easier to just put something in the middle of a couple of slices of bread.

But I just don't have anything to put in the bread. I mean, this morning, I knew that I'd run out of milk. So pretty much I had enough milk for a coffee and a tiny little bit of milk left.

So I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll have toast. And with the toast, I'll have marmalade on top.

And I got a little bit of, I suppose a little bit of pleasure from having thought up a solution to the problem. I felt quite nice to know that there was the issue. I've got nothing to eat.

Then I thought, ah, I'll have some toast. But that was just the first part of it. Because toast on its own is quite dry and not hugely appealing.

And I thought, well, I'll have some margarine on the toast to moisten it out. I thought, okay, that's good. But it's still not really grabbing my appetite, you know, my appetite's attention.

Then I remembered that I had marmalade in the cupboard. And I thought, ah, I know what I'll do. And I kind of put the two together.

It's a very great creative solution. And I thought, I know what I'll do. I'll have some marmalade and I'll spread it on the toast.

And I'll have marmalade on toast with my cup of coffee. And guess what? I open up the marmalade and it's out of date. It's not usable.

So I chuck it in the bin. So I've just got toast with just margarine on. Butter, margarine, whatever you want to call it.

There was a little bit of milk. So what I thought is I'll have a little bit of breakfast cereal. Just enough, you know, for a couple of mouthfuls.

And I'll have the toast and a cup of coffee. And it all worked out quite well. In fact, it was quite nice to eat something different, to have more than just one thing for breakfast.

To have a little, like a buffet kind of thing. Well, not a buffet, but you know, it wasn't really continental breakfast or full English breakfast. It was more just a budget, budget super saver breakfast.

It was very minimal. It wasn't really enough to suit my needs or to meet my needs. However, it was all right.

And there's no point getting too caught up in stuff like that really, is there? It's, you know, it was food I needed to eat. And I did eat. It was food.

Wasn't really, you know, it didn't, I didn't fill my socks. But then, it's a weird expression, isn't it? Oh, that was lovely. I filled my socks.

You're supposed to put it in your mouth. So that room with the piano, that was a weird room. I always felt a little bit, a bit, like it was a lonely room.

You know, it could sometimes go weeks, months, without anybody really going in there. You know, big table, just sitting there. Although I'm sure there was a couple of chairs in that room as well.

But that might have been before the piano arrived. Because I do recall sitting in a chair in that room, reading an astronomy book. And it was one that I got for Christmas.

And it was hardback, mainly pictures. And it was, I could just smell the print. I do like the print, the smell of books.

Yeah, fresh print. Not fresh as in, because it'd be wet, wouldn't even runny and stuff. But fresh, like a fresh book.

I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure that makes sense. I like fresh books. Something quite nice about a nice, fresh, nice, fresh scent of a newly opened book.

It just, it feels nice. It sounds nice. It smells nice.

Although I don't like all books. You know, in a sense of, some of the paper in some books is a bit rubbish. It's a bit coarse, or it's a bit, sometimes the books that are too glossy, or the pages are too glossy, especially like in a paperback.

I like just like regular paper that was in the old paperbacks, you know, going back 50 years or whatever. Sometimes you get glossy paper, or sometimes coarse paper, which is just grainy. It's not built to last.

Looks like it's been made out of breakfast cereal, which I'm sure it hasn't. Although there are some breakfast cereals that does resemble the taste of paper. It's always the stuff that's good for you.

I'm making that up. I've not eaten many things that are good for me. I had a dream last night.

I've dreamt quite a few times during my life. But I woke up feeling optimistic. It's like I woke up knowing what it is I wanted to do.

I can't remember what it is, but I think I woke up realizing that I'm already doing what I want to do. That was laying in bed sleeping. That was probably doing this, doing recordings, trying to help people in my own weird way.

And also thinking about maybe, oh yeah, I was thinking about getting myself some nice clothes and smarting myself up. Because maybe it's time that I gave a bit more attention to my beauty, my physical beauty. So I'm thinking it might be nice to just have some underwear that doesn't have holes and it's just one color.

Yeah, maybe. Not white though. I would never wear white underwear.

Why would anybody wear white underwear? You're just asking for trouble. There's so many other ways to embarrass myself. My nana always used to say, wear clean underwear in case you get run over by a bus.

Well, I'm guessing that if you get run over by a bus, your underwear is not going to be clean, is it? But I never said that to her because I didn't want to contradict her. Plus my granddad, he would have been upset with me. And he just said, oi.

I said, yeah, what? He said, what do you mean, what? I said, sorry. Yes, granddad. He said, that's better.

I said, thank you, granddad. He said, don't push it. I said, okay.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

My granddad was quite a cool person. Very calm. Didn't say much.

He was in the army when he was about left school, went into the army, served, I don't know how many years, 12 years or something. He was a boxer in the army as well. So he was a tough, tough man.

And then, well, I didn't really get to know him. I think I had two conversations with him the whole time that I knew him from the age I was, what, seven to the age of about 21. And during that time, I probably had two conversations with him.

One was about boxing. And I think one was, I think it was about politics or something. And that was it.

And oh, he did, he gave me a bonsai tree when I was about 17, 16. Gave me a bonsai tree. And I didn't really realize what it was.

And I didn't understand the significance of how much time and effort he'd put into it. Didn't know what a bonsai tree was back then. And I remember he asked me the week, a couple of weeks later, how's the bonsai tree? And I said, yeah, it's lovely.

It was great with my salad. And he goes, what did you say? I said, it was great with my salad. It tasted a bit weird, but got a few helpings out of it.

And he said, I don't believe it. How could you do that? Because he was from Australia. And yeah, I used to visit mainly to see my nan.

Well, not mainly, 100% to see my nan. And my nan might be out. Sometimes my granddad would say, your nan's out.

Sometimes he'd just let me in. And say, your nan's out. And he'd make me a sandwich.

And it was a cheese sandwich with mustard and a cup of tea. And it was lovely. But he didn't say anything to me.

He didn't talk to me. And I think he was just waiting for me to leave. So yeah, it was very strange.

I don't know, just didn't really connect. Didn't really, I don't know, just, I think I've taken more after my nan. She was a chatty person.

She used to like chat. And I can be quite chatty sometimes. Apparently my mother was quite chatty.

I don't know about my grandparents though, on my mum's side. I never met them. So I don't know what they were like as people.

Yeah, clocks go forward this week. I think it's, I think it's forward or back. No, forward.

Yeah, they go forward. So it'll be, yeah, it'll be lighter in the morning. No, it'll be lighter in the evening.

Which is cool. I like that. It's Mother's Day as well.

Someday here, I don't know. I think it's different in other countries. I think it'd be good if we just all kind of just synced with each other.

Let's just have the same day. Because Christmas is the same day every year for everywhere that celebrates Christmas. But then you've got different countries celebrate the new year at different times.

You know, in the, well, in my country, it's the 1st of January. But in other countries, they celebrate it in, I don't know, February, March, whatever. What's that about? I don't understand it.

Something's confused me. Algebra. That's one thing.

See, I'm okay with things like, what do you call them? Fractions. You know, but it's when you start adding up fractions. And how are you supposed to do it? Like the technique to add up fractions.

That's where I get a little bit lost. It's like, so you got like one, one half plus one half. Now we know it makes a one.

A half and a half makes one. I mean, that's, you know, I know that. But from a fraction perspective, how would turn that into a one? So what is it? One plus one equals two.

Or two plus two equals, how do you do it? I know there is a way because I learnt it at school. Or should I just say, I forgot it at school. No, I did a multiple choice when I did my maths exam.

And I just made it all up. My multiple choice, I didn't have, I didn't, I chose not to do multiple choice. I made one choice and that was just to make it up.

Just to write down any old rubbish. And it worked. If my aim was to get the lowest grade ever.

It worked. Yay. So yeah, it was a big house.

But you know, a big house isn't a big house. It's only big if there's less people in it. The more people are in there, the less big it seems.

So if I had three people living in this flat, the flat would seem very, very small. Much smaller than it is. And if I was shrunk down to being three foot tall, this flat would seem a lot bigger.

So if you're living in a seven bedroom house, but you've got six people living there, it doesn't seem that big. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think you do. We all understand some things, somewhere, somehow.

Bibbidi, bibbidi, boo. So hopefully you've drifted off to sleep through complete and utter boredom. Complete and utter boredom.

Absolute. Pointless. Yabba yabba that I've been doing.

Talking about nothing for an hour. And now I will leave you to continue your sleep. And I'll see you next time.

Bye.