#175 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (8th July 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland. And my stomach is rumbling.

Yay! Which is nice. Please only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes. Now, I'm thinking, because I'm thinking of starting a new podcast called A Noisy Little Ferret Running Around In The Background Just As I Press Record.

I don't know what he's up to. Anyway, I'm going to read a book. So, none of my silly nonsense today.

None of my silly jokes or none of my, you know, silly puns or life experiences or made-up stories, any of that stuff. I'm going to read from one of the best writers in history. I say one of the best.

I mean, there's lots, isn't there? There's hundreds and thousands maybe. Leo Tolstoy. Now, that might sound a bit scary at first when I say that, because I know a lot of people may associate Leo, Mr. Leo, with War and Peace.

Well, this is not that book. This is Childhood, Boyhood and Youth. So, I've got it in my hands right now.

I'm rubbing it up in the front. It's a little bit damaged. It's a new book, but it's really weird because on the front, there's like a little boy, a painting.

Well, a little boy, a little girl or someone looking out to the sea. But where their ear is, there's like little dents, like there really wasn't a real ear there at some point. I'm sure there wasn't.

So, this is translated by Dora O'Brien. Oops. So, what I thought I would do, because I had a lot of positive feedback from the last time I read from a book, and I've got no idea what book that was.

What I need to do, I have to be careful about which books I use due to copyright law. And this book was published in 1852. Well, actually, and Childhood was Boyhood, because it's three books.

So, I'll read Childhood first. Boyhood was first published in 1854. And Youth was first published in 1857.

So, I think, I imagine it's been translated by lots of different people. But the actual book itself is out of copyright. So, I'm just going to read this book to you.

It's good. You hear him, he's just running around. He's just run to the door.

But you know, the door of the room, Andre, this is, he's just laid down flat. And he's staring at me. He's laid down on his side.

And he's just staring at me. And I can't even see his face properly, because I've got my reading glasses on. I can see his face and I can see he's got a face.

It's not like I'm looking at him. Oh my God, he's turned into a boiled egg. No, he's still there.

A little furry, little furry face. I gave him a little cuddle earlier. Oh, he's so beautiful.

Sometimes. So, this book, it's a very big, big, big, big book. But there's a lot of notes at the end, which I'm not going to read.

Because although admittedly, it would be boring, it would be too boring for me. If I'll be honest with you, I'd find it, you know, I could read, I could read the notes. But for me, it's not about the book being boring, because, you know, it's about me just reading it in a boring way, I guess.

And hopefully Andre will shut up in a minute. So I'm sitting here at my desk, on my table. I inherited, I was talking to my friend about inheritance, which is a weird kind of subject.

And he was, I won't say what he said, but I'll tell you what I said. I said, I really ever inherited anything. I mean, partly because no one likes me.

No, it's a lot of my relatives live to be very, very old. You know, all my uncles and aunts are still alive. And they're all pretty much, I guess, in their 70s now, and they're pretty much my oldest uncle's in his 80s.

And my dad's 74, I think 75. So they all kind of live to be, you know, my nan was 90. I think she was 94, 95, when she passed away.

My granddad was 80. And that's my dad's side of the family. I don't know my mom's side.

So it's, you know, my brothers are still alive, you know, so it's all kind of, um, I haven't inherited anything, which, for me, the downside of that is, you know, I was gonna say inheritance tax, inheritance tax. But no, I want, like with my dad's, you know, I don't want to inherit money from him when he's gone. I want him to be alive, to watch me wasting his money.

That's why, you know, I want him to see what I'm spending the money on. Not that there's going to be much money, because he's probably give it all to me niece. God, that was bitter, wasn't it? But we're talking about it.

And I remembered that I did get an inheritance. And it was my nan's sister, when she passed away, and she was in her, I think she's about 89. She was 89 years old.

And this was back in 2008, I think. But when she passed away, they found something like 50 grand underneath the bed, you know, and which was a bit of a shock for everyone. And I'm not even sure she might have forgotten it was there.

So I inherited, it wasn't like a will or anything, but I got 50, I got £500. My dad gave me £500. So I'm guessing he must have inherited a few grand and kind of shared it out.

I wasn't in the will, like please give my great nephew £500. My great nephew that I never see ever. I did see it, I did, not very often.

But my nan, they used to take turns phoning each other once a week. And my nan said, it's usually like a Sunday evening, I think it was, and my nan said that they'd be on the phone for nearly two hours. And her sister would just talk and talk and talk and talk.

So I think I might have inherited that ability to just talk and talk and talk and talk. And she was also kind of a bit, I won't use the word reclusive, but probably a bit reclusive. And I don't mean that in a bad way, just she, I think, enjoyed her own company and was quite happy to be on her own.

Because being alone doesn't mean being lonely, necessarily. For some people it is, I know. But for me it isn't.

And plus I got Andre, but even if I didn't have him, I'd still still be alright. Mind you, I can't imagine life without him now. Little weird furry poo machine that he is.

So that had nothing to do with the book. See, even when I try to be all sensible and professional, yes, because it's very professional, isn't it, reading a book that someone else has written. I always felt professional.

So what I thought is I'd read this. It's a long, long book. I'm clearly not going to be able to read it all in one go.

I'm probably not even going to be able to read a, oh maybe, looks like some of the chapters are quite short. So maybe I can read like a chapter at a time or a few chapters. So I'm not sure how I'm going to do it.

I'm not sure the best route. Because it seems a little bit, I don't know what the word is, but non-continuous. Or, you know, if I just, there's 316 pages and that's between the three books.

The first book is, the first book goes up to page 95 from page 5. So that is 90 pages, isn't it? And it'll probably take me to the end of the year to do that. The thing is, the reason that I'm reading this book is not really just for you. The boring part is for you, me being, I don't know how to talk interestingly really.

I'm just, just the way I talk. But I'm actually going to be interested in the book. And it's time that for me, because I've always been a, not for quite a while, but I used to be a really avid reader and a collector of books.

Not just in recent years. The last 20 years has been much more therapy based and psychology, philosophy, Buddhism, hypnosis, NLP, psychotherapy, you know, that kind of stuff. But I've kind of, I miss the old days a little bit, the early 90s when I used to, I used to read a lot of beat generation books, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, as well as all the other big names at the time.

I used to get a magazine, which used to kind of talk about the writers, a lot of which were still alive. They'd been writing in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And Kerouac, of course.

And then I kind of got into some of the more alternative stuff, such as Charles Bukowski. And I always wanted to be a writer. I never have been a writer.

And there was something that I always wanted to do from a very, very small boy. And, yeah, I remember trying to write books, trying to write stories. And sometimes just sitting and looking at a blank page, because I could write about stuff that just came into my mind.

But I wasn't able to control my mind to write about stuff that I wanted to write about. If that makes sense. I couldn't.

You know, I'd sit down and I had this little pull-out desk, part of the furniture that I had in my bedroom. And I remember I was sitting upstairs on the top of the house. So basically, you'd go in the front door.

If you'd go straight up the stairs, turn right, the bathroom is just, you go past the bathroom and the toilet. There's a bathroom with a toilet, plus a toilet. There's also a toilet downstairs as well.

There's quite a few of us living there, so we had to have plenty of places to do wee-wees. So you turn right, around the banister, walk down, go past three rooms, and then turn right again up the stairs. And my brother's bedroom is ahead, so walk around that, sort of pass that up the steps, turn right again.

And then my other brother's bedroom was straight ahead, but mine was on the left. My oldest brother used to have the one on the left, the one that I had, but then he moved into the bigger room, which used to be our playroom. I'm not quite sure.

Yeah, I think that was removed because my little brother needed a bigger room. And even though we had a spare room, but that had to be spare, just left empty in case of visitors and stuff. So having a spare room was more important than having a place where we could play pool and table tennis.

Probably time to let it go really, isn't it? It's about 35 years ago. Oh, let it go now. Oh, I feel so much lighter.

And in my bedroom, you go in, on the right hand side I had, I think I had two sets of shelves, ones that were just on brackets on the wall. And I used to put too many books on them, and then sometimes the whole thing would just fall on the floor, they'd fall over. Or the wood or the shelf, because it wasn't attached.

It wasn't actually attached to the bracket, it was just like laying on top of the bracket. It should have been attached to the bracket, because then it would have stayed up. But anyway, I put too many books on it, it kept falling down.

I also had, on the left hand side, as you go in, there was this, it's like a wardrobe. Yeah, so it's a kind of quite a big unit. The wardrobe was on the right, so that was a door, big, you know, open up, put stuff, hanging stuff up.

And in the next part of the, of the, I don't know, contraption, whatever you want to call it, there was a, what was it? I think it had like a shelf at the top, quite deep, so I could put stuff in there. And then there was a pull down unit, like a pull down desk. It's basically a door that would pull down, and that would be the desk.

You can keep stuff inside there. And then underneath there was, at the bottom, there was, I think, three gaps where you could, it was big enough to put albums or magazines. And, you know, it's quite a lot of space, so you could put stuff in there.

And I used to collect Flex bodybuilding magazine, and a few other different magazines as well at that time, because I was a bit older then, I think I was like 14, 13 or 14 when I started living in that room. So I was there for about two years, maybe three. Yeah, so, and what else? I had a set of drawers as well somewhere.

And there was a bed, of course, and a windowsill. But the windowsill looked onto a wall, a brick wall. There was no light in my room.

There was light. I mean, it wasn't like pitch black. There was light.

But there was no sort of light shining in. There's no sunlight or anything. Well, I suppose it was sunlight.

That's where light comes from, isn't it? But does that make sense? It was the wall, because it was a semi-detached house. So my bedroom window faced the next house. So you could, if you like, put your, if you manoeuvred your head and your eyes correctly, could kind of see a little bit onto the main road, you know, the front of the house, but that's about it.

But I could stick my head out of the window. So that was all right. But yeah, it's not, it's better to have sunlight.

I've lived in places where there's no sunlight and where there's, before I moved here, I lived in a basement. Although there was windows, it just didn't catch hardly any light in there at all. And so I had to have the light on a lot, like the, you know, the light bulb switched on.

But it also meant that I needed, I had to have the curtains drawed closed, otherwise people could see me in there. So it's, you know, a bit, it's not great. But I'm not there anymore.

I'm here. And I've got big windows, which do let the light in during the daytime. And I've got a big light behind me now that's shining, which is good.

It's one of those, not halogen, is it halogen light? It's like really bright, proper. My man used to have one, big old light. It's not big, as in like size wise.

You know, that's like, try and stretch around it to get to the front door. It's not that big. It's just, but it's bright, bigness as in brightness.

I've got the other light on as well. But because I'm sitting at the desk at my table, it's my desk and my table already, I got my reading glasses on. I needed to have the light on behind me.

Otherwise, it's not bright enough in here to actually see the book. I can see the book and see it's a book. You know, it's not like, Oh my God, what's that kebab doing there? No, it's a book.

I know it's a book. But the actual, the reading, you know, the words, it's not, wasn't very bright. With these reading glasses, I can't see, I can't see distance.

It doesn't really matter because there's nothing in the distance. But even the things, for example, I've got a, yeah, it's a picture of me and my Nan in a little picture frame on top of one of my bookcases. It's not even that far away from me, but I can't, it's just blurry.

I can see it's a picture frame. And it's, Oh God, what's that worm doing there? No, it's me. And, but it's a picture of me and my Nan.

And I know it's me. I know it's my Nan. So it's not like I don't know who it is.

Because I already know who it is. I know what you know. You can forget things that aren't important, obviously.

But the, I can't see it, it's blurry. But then I take my glasses off, and it's actually clearer, even though I need glasses for distance. And then I put the other glasses on.

I can see it absolutely wonderfully. What strange eyesight I have. I blame it on my dad.

I can't blame everything else on him. I don't really. So, so I kind of want to read.

I want to kind of read all the classics. I've read a few over the years. I want to just read for the love of reading.

But if I can kind of do two things at the same time, then why not? So I get to learn something by reading, you know, a classic book. And you get to be bored. And it's not the book that's boring.

That's, you know, that's what I mean. I want that to be clear that I'm not mocking the book by saying that I'm reading a boring book because I'm not. It's just, it's boring listening to someone read, I find.

And yeah, I fall asleep. I was, if I, if I lay down and I listen to someone talking, it doesn't matter what they're talking about. I'll fall asleep.

And, but what I thought, at least with this, is it's good quality words that you're hearing. It's not my words. It's Leo, Leo's words.

So that's it really. So when I first started this recording, I said, I'm thinking about doing a new podcast. And I thought about doing a podcast where solely it's just me reading books.

However, I just, it seems this fits more into this. So maybe I could do both. I don't know.

But I know, I'm pretty, pretty sure that if I did a podcast just reading books, I just have to get on with the book and just read it. Because people will be like, oh, I want you to, you said you're going to read Leo's book. But you were talking for like five hours before you even got the first sentence out.

And so I don't know if I'd get away with that outside of these, let me boy to sleep, recordings. Because those of you that listen regularly kind of know what I'm like. This is what I do.

And it's not, it's not, it's not a, it's not an act. It's just the way I am. So that's why it's where I am when I do these.

When I do deep sleep, whisper ones, I said this yesterday, I think some of the other like insomnia sessions or the anxiety podcast. I'm a bit more sensible. A little bit more because it's focused on a particular thing.

And because I know I've been told by a few people that actually not everybody listens to these, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, to go to sleep. Some people listen just for company, like it's kind of like a radio show or, you know, just to have someone, a voice. And I suppose I kind of do the same thing.

Because I listened to a radio station called LBC and it's a talk radio show or talk radio station. And I listen every day, you know, various amount of times, but probably a good couple of hours a day, sometimes more. And I kind of feel I've got to know the presenters.

There's at least four presenters that I listen to, usually like the evening ones. There's Nick Abbott, he's got a radio show Friday and Saturday evenings from 10 to one. He's funny.

And Steve Allen has got a radio show from five, four to seven weekly, Monday to Friday. And he does some stuff at the weekend as well. So often he's on now, I often listen to him.

And Adam Stadler, is it Stadler? And Matt, Matt something, I forget his name. So there's a couple that I list, there's four altogether that I actually listen to regularly. So I kind of feel like I've got to know them, even though I don't know them.

You know, I might have a really smelly feet, I don't know, but it doesn't matter because on the radio is, you know, I don't know everything about them, but they do open up. Actually a friend of mine today said he was surprised when I said that I talk about my life and because I do joke and say that I make stuff up and which I do, you know, let me bore you to sleep sessions, I make stuff up. I tell fibs, I suppose, I lie, not lie, I just make up stuff.

I think a lot of stuff is kind of obvious that's been made up. But then I do also tell the truth as well. I've talked about bipolar, I've talked about my mental health issues or whatever.

And in some ways, in some ways, I'm kind of a success story. In some ways, I'm not, you know, depends how you look at it. Financially, I'm really not a success.

But if you gauge success by having perhaps made a difference to quite a few people over the course of quite a few years, over quite a few different countries, then I suppose I have been had a bit of success. As long as some of the stuff I do is helpful. And if it wasn't, people wouldn't be listening.

Ultimately, and why can you imagine someone listen to this and I'd be really angry. And like, well, I don't know this bloke. Why are you listening to stop? Don't be kind to yourself and do something different.

You know, it's really important. It doesn't matter. You know, what's more important is to you, you look after yourself and you do what you need to do.

And you enjoy the things that you enjoy and do more of that. So whatever it is, whether it's playing cards, going fishing, astronomy, whatever it is that you love doing, I really do advise you do more of that. You know, as long as it's not hurting you or anyone else.

Have some fun, especially of any age, but take it from an older man. I can't believe I'm an older man now. 49 next month.

49. I know I don't sound it, but I am. I never sounded, never sounded my age.

Honestly, when I was probably in my 30s, I probably sounded like I was in my early 20s, maybe late teens even. What was I like? You know, and when I was in my late teens, or not late teens, but I was in my teens, I sounded like a child pretty much. And then when I was a small child, I was basically just going, you know, highest pitched voice ever.

I'm sure I was like the last child in my school to have their voice break. I was in the fifth year, I think, where my voice, I think my, I think it was people in 11, their voices were breaking. Mine didn't break until I was probably 14.

I used to come down, every time I'd come down in the morning. And I didn't speak yet, but I could feel my voice, I could feel my throat. And because I hadn't spoken yet, I was a little bit croaky.

And I'd wake up, I'd be like, morning. And I thought, yes, at last. So I'd say, morning.

How is everyone? I was like, oh, morning. It used to just change, but eventually it happened. But it didn't happen, I think it like gradually happened.

I had one of those voices that would just gradually change. It didn't just drop, you know, it wasn't just like, there you go, now you're a man. It was a gradual, gradual process.

And I've never had a deep voice, just never had a, just, it's just, it's just a voice, isn't it? But it's never been, some people put a fake deep voice on, which I find quite funny. Because you notice, and they get used to doing it, and they kind of become part of them. But I don't know why.

I really like, you can see they're kind of straining to make their voice deep. I don't understand that. So we've all got different voices, haven't we? Which is good, because imagine phoning someone up.

I was going to say, I have no idea who they were. But of course, mobile phones has the name of the person on there. So that ruins that one.

Or if you answer the phone, you're blindfolded, and you decided, and then you wouldn't know who it was, would you? You may think, who would blindfold themselves? Well, I have. I did. I had this little meditation thing I did.

And it was back in 1998, I think it was. And I decided, you know what? I think it might have been influenced by something I read. Wonder why he's decided to come out and stretch himself out.

Anyway, what I decided to do is I wanted to get in touch with my sense of taste. Excuse the background sound. It's Andre.

He's laying on some newspaper and he's yawning. He's staring at me. I don't know quite what he wants.

Now he's, you don't want to know what he's doing now. Don't be kissing me after you've done that. And so what I decided to do is I had cooked myself some dinner.

There was no one else in the house, which was good. I said, shut up. There was no one else in the house.

And it was, I don't know, probably about five, six o'clock in the evening. So I did something I hadn't done for a while because I cooked some chips, frozen chips and some fish fingers at the same time in a deep fat fryer. I say deep fat fryers oil.

And most of my life, I've not fried anything. Most of my life I've cooked. It's either been in the oven or under the grill.

Frying them together. Oh, so much better. It came out perfect.

But, you know, I was going through a little patch of eating fried food. So what I thought I would do is I'd cook the food because when it comes to things like deep fat fryers, blindfolds aren't a good idea. So I cooked the food first and then I put the blindfold on.

Then I thought, how am I going to get the plate to the table? But I managed to do it. And I couldn't see anything through it. I could, you know, I couldn't see what I was doing.

So I managed to get to the table. I sat down. I probably might should have just taken the blindfold off and then sat down, but it's fine.

I mean, I carried it so I could see where I was going. But I also kind of wanted to get in touch a little bit with the experience of a very, very minimal, obviously, would be the experience that I got in touch with. But just the experience of doing stuff in the house without sight.

So I did that in the kitchen. I know I'll start off with something easy like frying food. No.

So I sat down at the table. So I had chips and fish fingers and beans. I don't know if I had beans.

They were Heinz beans if I did have them. So I wouldn't eat anything else really. And I've tried every type of beans.

But I don't know if I had beans, but I imagine I did. Pretty certain I would have and also some tomato ketchup as well. Possibly a few slices of bread and very likely a cup of tea as well.

But not too hot. It has to be the right temperature so I can drink it whilst I eat. By that I don't mean putting food in my mouth and then putting some tea in my mouth and squishing it all around.

I mean like in intervals. I've always found it accompanies food liquid. I just like to have a drink when I'm eating.

It's always been the same. I say that and I don't know. I suppose it makes sense because you think the first food we had was just liquid, wasn't it? Whether it was from the sauce or if it was just like some kind of milk substitute, protein, you know whatever that babies have.

I don't know. I tell you what, I used to love Farley's Rusks. And you know the reason I loved them? Because my Nan used to give me Farley's Rusks as a child.

Not as a small child, but as you know from the age of seven pretty much. Why did she have Farley's Rusks in the kitchen cupboard? That's what I don't understand. But she bought them and she gave them to us and we loved them.

I say we, I mean putting me, my brothers and stuff. I know I did anyway. I can only really talk for myself.

I don't remember them kind of making a fuss and going, I don't want any Farley's Rusks. What did you keep doing that for? Oh, I don't remember that conversation. I'd love it if Andre just speak quiet for a bit.

He's running around from one part of the room to the next. You'd probably love it if I'd get on and start reading this book, wouldn't you? Probably, probably. But I had these fish fingers.

I had these fish fingers and these chips and these beans and a cup of tea at the right temperature. I left the fish fingers and the chips to cool down a bit because I don't like food being too hot in my mouth because I find that it just, it's uncomfortable and it burns, a bit burny. I don't enjoy it as much.

But at the same time, I don't want to eat cooked food that's cold. This is kind of a happy medium. Of course, it has to be piping hot before you put it onto the plate, you know, for health and safety reasons.

I mean, you don't cook something just to the temperature that you want to eat it at. It has to be hot and, you know, piping hot. I never understood the word piping.

Because I think of piping, I think of cake decorating. I think of Andre scratching his thing just then. Sorry about that.

He's hassling, he's now staring at me. He's walked under the table. He's staring at me.

I'm going to pick him up because I think he, he wants my attention. Hello. Hello, mate.

You okay? You okay? He's licking my hand. What's going on with you? You got everything you need. You got your food, you're not touching your food.

You got your water. You've got your dry food as well. You've got lots of toys.

Oh, you know what I did? I don't know if I told you. I've got a toddler bath, like a, like a baby bath, which you, well, actually, you could bathe a, like a, like a very small child in. That's what it's for.

But I bought it for £2.99 from Aldi. Got a few funny looks on the bus coming back. But I wasn't wearing shoes, so that might be it.

And I filled it with dirt, thinking that Andre would love it because he'd be able to do some digging and stuff. But he doesn't seem that interested in it for some reason. So I don't know.

I don't know what's going on with him. I need to cut his fingernails because they're getting a bit long. So what happens is fingernails, if they get too long, they curl a little bit at the end and then he sometimes gets things stuck in there.

At the moment, he's got, I don't know what it is, some kind of fabric. That was him. Got some fabric stuck in one of his nails, but the nail's not very long, so it's just, it's just him.

And it might have been him, like, scratching at the carpet and stuff like that. So I'll, I'll get that, I'll get that off of him. You should see him now.

He's actually laying on my laptop. My laptop's closed. He's laying on the laptop, which he never does.

Also laying on top of the book that I haven't read. And he's in my arms and I'm kind of just holding him. And he's really relaxed.

He's just, why are you so relaxed, Andre? Whoops. I say that and then he starts wiggling. What are you wiggling for? What are you wiggling for? Can you do a little funny sneeze for everyone to hear? Say, achoo, achoo, achoo.

Do you love your daddy? Do you love your daddy the mostest in the whole world? Yes? He's giving me kisses. Okay, there you go. Behave yourself.

He's just gone and run on the carpet and, no, onto the paper and done a wee. So that's why he was trying to get out of my arms, because he needed to go and, you know, now he's run off somewhere else. See, even when I try, I attempt to do something really serious.

Andre. Sorry about that. It's Andre again.

He's just. You don't even want to know what he's doing now. You're going to hear what he's doing if you listen, if you're still awake.

Wow. That's not what I bought you that teddy bear for. Oh, well.

So in the background, you've got the sweet sounds of Andre. And he will be making some noise or some sounds. So I'm just so annoying.

I just want him to be quiet. So I had these, this blindfold on purposely so that I could eat chips and fish and chips. Fish fingers and chips.

I sometimes wonder if the neighbor downstairs can hear, hear his little footsteps running around. I know he's eating his dinner, so you probably hear that. Yeah, so I had these fish fingers and chips.

And taking the visual side out, I could have just closed my eyes, couldn't I? To be fair, I didn't. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I've had eyelids for years, you know, but I forgot I had them.

Yeah. Anyway, I had the blindfold on. I say blindfold, I think it was a tea towel.

And I believe that my senses, my taste and my smell increased. And even the holding of the knife and fork, the physical sensation of holding those metal objects seemed to magnify a little bit. So it's quite, that's quite a nice experience.

I was a little bit worried that someone might walk in now. Because it's like, oh, how do I explain this? But, you know, admittedly, I didn't have, it was an experiment. But I didn't have to do it naked.

But you know, nevertheless, I wanted to kind of get in touch with the different senses without the distraction of Andre eating, the distraction of the other senses. And because the visual sense can be, I suppose, a bit overloaded sometimes. Because a lot, you know, even just in this room, I'm quite, I think I'm quite minimalist.

But there's, you know, if I described this room and every item in it, it would, you know, just throw a bit of stuff in there. I've actually maneuvered the room around a little bit, because I've got a punch bag now. So I've got a bracket on the wall with a punch bag.

And my friend helped me to put, well, he put it up, actually, I just watched. So I had to move the chair from against the wall and put my little table on the right hand side of my chair instead of the left. I had to move the TV away from the wall, and I put the carpet cleaner next to the wall.

So what's weird, and the table's now exactly where it was before. But for some reason, now that the chair's not against the wall, it seems to be a bit more comfortable, because it seems to stretch, stretch easier for some reason. Again, he's, he doesn't have to do that, he's just showing off.

Can you hear him? He's now climbing through a tunnel. Now he's run to the front door, so I don't know. He suddenly seems to be full of energy, which is the opposite to what I want, because I'm going to be going to bed soon.

And I prefer to go to bed when he's asleep, because then I don't disturb him. And instead of putting him into his cage in the storage room, I've started, and I used to have this, I used to have the cage in here, but it makes so much noise I could never make a recording. I could make recordings, but it was noisy, so it was just, if he's in a cage, he, trust me, if he wants to get out of the cage, he'll let me know.

So by giving him free, by giving him free reign to just run around, do what he wants, I'd hoping that he'd be just a bit more considerate. He's just gone into his bag now, so he's probably going to go to sleep. But, so what I do now is I close the bedroom, I close the living room door, so he stays in the living room, but he's got all his toys in there, he's got his water, food, loads of stuff to play with and run around and, you know.

Admittedly, I'd rather have the whole flat to do that in, but I can't give that to him because a couple of nights ago, I let him have the whole flat and just close my bedroom door. And it was going really well, and then he started scratching at the bedroom door, but not just a little bit, he just did not give up. So I had to put him into the living room and close the door.

Otherwise, I'd love for him just to have the full reign of, you know, the kitchen, bathroom, hallway and the living room. Because he loves that, he loves running around to different, you know, different rooms and stuff. I say love, I don't know if that's how he feels about it, it might be really tedious for him.

It's like, oh, I'm in the bathroom again, wonderful. Nothing's changed, it still looks the same. So it might be a little bit, you know, like that for him.

But, you know, he seems to be quite happy doing it. But in reality, other than the living room, his favourite room is the bedroom. That's where he does a lot of his activities.

Unfortunately, he loves sleeping on the bed, or in the bed, or inside the, he'd sleep inside the mattress if he could get inside there. But he loves the bed, because it's comfortable. He likes to rap, and not rap as in, you know, Dr. Dre, but he likes to, I wonder if he's a real doctor.

Isn't it illegal to pretend to be a doctor? He used to, he likes to get into the quilt, sometimes actually inside the quilt, or just wrap himself, wrap the quilt around him. He loves the bed. The thing is, if I'm asleep in bed, he climbs up on it and he just hassles me.

Because he wants me to be awake when he's awake. And he wants me to go away when he wants to sleep. And he climbs on me, and he just pokes me in the face, and licks my face, and nibbles on my face.

Or starts like, biting my toes, and, you know, like, he will literally just lick my eyelids and start nibbling on my eyebrows, because he wants me to be awake. And if I don't get up, he then starts banging doors. I go into the kitchen, and he'll keep banging the kitchen cupboard, the one he can reach.

And he just lays on his back, and he just pushes the door open and lets it slam. And he'll continuously do that, until I get out of bed. Very devious, very devious.

All right, so where shall we start? So this is chapter one. Carl, Evanich, the tutor. On 12th August, 18.

And it's blank, blank. So I don't know what year. Exactly three days after my 10th birthday, when I had received such wonderful presents, Carl Evanich woke me up at 7 o'clock in the morning by swatting a fly right above my head with a fly swatter made of sugar paper on a stick.

That's all I've got time for, because it's now going to 62 minutes. So I'll read you the next paragraph tomorrow. I'll try and read it.

I'll try and just do it without talking, but it's got to be possible. Anyway, thank you for listening. And hopefully this was boring enough.

Bye-zee-bye. And please remember to subscribe, if you haven't already, to this podcast.