#424 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (9th June 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And if you can't, please don't. This podcast, let's see, let's have a little description. And I suppose, oh, I didn't realize I had so much snot up your nose.

Excuse me, I'll just pretend I've edited that out. I think, um, uh, how would you, how would you describe these podcasts? A bit kind of taken on a life of their own really. They started off, if you listen to the very first recording, it's basically a hypnosis recording.

And then gradually, they become less and less focused. And at times, really, really weird. I need to, I want to do a few more really weird ones at some point.

But, uh, you know, something experimental. But the idea was to, well, when I first started, it was about half an hour long. Not this recording, I'm talking about the, I've been very itchy, got an itchy foot.

Yeah, it's a bit chilly, a bit chilly in here today. Has been for the last couple of days, maybe three days. It's nice during the day, I think.

I've not been out, but it seems to be, well, quite overcast. I just heard a weird noise. It's sounding like Andre drinking, but it's not Andre drinking because he's not here.

Oh, he's, um, he's licking something. So, okay. Yeah.

Andre, I think you're clean now. I think, you know, I think it's fine. You can stop now.

Blimey. So I don't know, I think that the first reason was to just talk and be boring. And it sort of progressed into being a longer recording.

And for the last couple of years, it's been at least an hour long for most recordings. Although last week, I did do one that was about less than an hour, just under an hour. But the reason for that, I didn't mention on the recording is because I could hear that there was about to be some noises, some background noises.

So I kind of, uh, I finished before it started. Sounds like a title of a song. I finished before I started.

So I've got a couple of messages, actually, from Naomi is one. The first message is, Hi, Jason, as, uh, let me bore you to sleep. Episode 422.

I don't know when that was. Was that yesterday? I would absolutely enjoy listening to 3000 of your podcasts. Just waffle on for the next 10 years.

Make up wherever you wish. I'd listen to it. I did reply.

So thanks. Thanks, Naomi. I think you put it in the minority there.

I don't think I can't imagine many people would want to still be listening in 10 years. Wow. Can you imagine? I replied, I said, Thanks, Naomi.

We can have a three 3000 celebration. I'll be 60 by then. And I put, ha ha ha.

And, uh, Naomi's replied back saying, I pass. I shouldn't reply this one. Okay.

I won't. I won't. So you said that I've got to be careful.

I got in trouble recently for reading out people's messages because sometimes they're personal. And so I won't read it. It's just a, it's basically that she'd look forward to that.

She stick it in that calendar. And wow. Imagine 10 years time.

I mean, the way it's going, the way it's going, I will, I seem to be doing some getting calculator out. It's on my phone. Generally, I would say do 25 recordings a month.

Probably more probably is nearly 30, but let's say 25 times by 120. Oh, it's 3000. Yeah.

So if I do 25 recordings a month, I'll probably do more. I'd say I probably do about 26 and a half. Andre, why have you got to do that right now? He's, um, yeah, again, it's date night.

Why, why now? It's very cheeky though, because you said, why have you got to do it underneath my, because I've got an, uh, abdominal exercise board. So it's, uh, it's like a body sculpture at abdominal board. And I said, why have you got to do it just there underneath my abdominal board? And he said, well, it's got to get some use.

Isn't that you're never going to use it. Like so cheeky winds me up. Oh, I got a message from a message for my friend, Elisa.

Hi Elisa. I'm the king of noises. I don't know that it sounds more like, uh, some kind of puppet.

Not the nicest sound. Oh, I got a recording on Audible. I'm getting a little bit carried away with Audible at the moment.

I can't help myself. Um, I mean, it's, I think if to get, um, I don't want to say the word addiction, obviously it's a silly, it's not the wrong word, but getting a habit of listening or have it at any, it's not the worst habit in the world. That's what I'm trying to say.

Um, and I've got a couple of, no, I've got a new one today called riding it, grinding it out by Ray Kroc. What it is. Whoops.

Whoops. Oh, that's weird. Book details.

Okay. Right. Um, it's basically, the summary is few interpreters, interpreters, and entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs can claim to have radically, radically, radically changed the way we live live.

And Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food dash service, automation, franchising, shared national trainings, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. Now that was a long sentence.

I hope Ray Kroc doesn't get annoyed with me. Um, he's dead anyway, only so, but even more interested in the Ray Kroc, the businessman is Ray Kroc, the man, not your typical self-made tycoon, Kroc-y. His name is Kroc, but I call him Kroc-y.

Well, I phone him quite often. You like Kroc-y? They say, yeah, thanks, JJ. Um, we have a very open relationship.

Anyway, Kroc was 52 years old when he opened his first franchise. I watched the film. It's weird, isn't it? Consider I'm not, I'm not really into business, but I am into business.

It's a weird one. I'm very into trying to just, I want to be successful, but I don't think success is about money. Not to me.

I guess, I suppose I'm my, my psychologist. Uh, she's through talking and said, um, we kind of figured out maybe I'm a bit of a social, um, a socialist. And I used to be member of the socialist party when I was younger.

I was in my twenties. There's this woman, she knocked on my door and I think she had a young woman with her. She was probably in her thirties or forties.

I was about 21. I know she had a, she had someone there that was probably about 18, 19 or whatever. And she knocked on my door trying to sell me socialist paper.

No, no, no. Oh, now I know. Yeah.

Actually, no, I saw her in town in Stratford and she had a little market stall or she might've just been handing out leaflets and stuff. And at that time I didn't have any friends. This is really early days of my comedy career.

Well, not career, but period. So I didn't, I was basically working and I didn't really know anyone other than the people I was working with. So she said, oh, come out, come out to this thing.

And I did. And it was a, like a socialist meeting, but there was people there. I got to meet people and also got myself a girlfriend.

I forgot about that. I forgot about her. Yeah.

So I got myself a girlfriend and we just clicked. Like really cool. We banged into each other and it was, yeah, after all about that.

And she was a doc, not, not the girl, the girl that I was dating, but the lady, you know, she was, yeah, she was a surgeon. And I guess she, I'm sorry, I reckon she's probably in her forties. Not that that's really relevant to anything, but she liked me.

It sort of took me under her wing a little bit and I appreciated it. I don't know why I liked her. You know, she was friendly.

She was nice. And I got to know a few people. We went to Hastings on a day trip and this was even like late.

So I used to, I was involved with it for quite a few years. Oh my goodness. I'm a socialist.

I'm a communist. I'm not. Yeah.

I wasn't really that involved, but I did used to read the paper and she'd come around my house and collect the money for it. I'd get it delivered every week. And I did read it and I'm very, always kind of been up for equality really, sort of in every aspect.

But, you know, I think, you know, the whole men, women should all get paid the same for if they do the same job. And so should young people should get paid the same as someone that's older, if they're doing the same job, if it's an hourly rate. That bloody ferret is annoying me.

Can you hear it? Can you hear him in the background? Just crinkling in that bubble wrap? He got stuck in it yesterday. So he did his business, what he was doing. I guess, you know, they got in, it was the end of the night, end of the day, his girlfriend slipped out, got into a taxi and drove off.

And he's running away. But he's got all this bubble wrap wrapped around him and he can't get rid of it. It's like wrapped around his neck and around his body.

And he's running around. And I just said, come here. So he comes over to me.

I picked him up and I took the plastic off him. I said, why don't you just come to your daddy? That's what I'm here for. You get tangled up in something, you just come to me.

And he said, yeah, I know. I was a bit embarrassed. I said, why? He said, I thought you might tell everyone, you know, in your recording.

I don't like that. I don't like it when you talk about me. I said, Andre, of course, I'm going to tell everyone.

So yeah, I do think that someone that's been doing a job longer should get paid more, though. Just, you know, experience and because that's how it used to be. Remember, that's how it used to be.

People used to get promoted. Didn't have to have an interview to get promoted, to get a job. You know, within the company, you'd get promoted.

Now, I've not been in any company that does that. It's all been, yeah, you can apply for the position as a team leader. And you can apply for it.

Ridiculous. I did apply for a team leader job in one place. And I was literally, I was just making the numbers up.

It's the only reason why they asked me to apply. I got the job. I'm just saying, this, this, no, I didn't.

No, I didn't. But I, he's just annoying me. Andre, can you just go, go away? Please just go away.

Just for an hour. He's, okay, I said no, is it? Okay, fair enough. Did you hear that? He just shouted at me.

Yeah, I don't know what the point. All right. See, I'm quite into socialism, but you know what? I'm also into, I think if somebody works really, really, really hard and has a business, then why shouldn't they get paid loads of money? Why shouldn't they earn it? If they've earned it and they've made jobs for other people, why shouldn't they? I know it's kind of a, I'm a weird socialist really, aren't I? I suppose I'm kind of like a Tony Blair version of a socialist.

Yeah. Oh, please. Maybe.

Yeah, I just, I kind of, I don't know, it's this part, you know, some people would be like, oh, you know, about anyone that does well. I think it's cool when people do well. I think it's exciting.

You know, when someone succeeds, whether it's in whatever it is, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's winning a race or losing weight or, you know, whatever, that stupid ferret is making so much noise. I might have to pause the recording in a minute and tell him off. Stick him on the naughty step.

Unless he's right. I'm going to say he might actually be stuck. Because that sometimes happens, he gets stuck.

But, you know, if he was stuck, he'd be telling me, he'd be shouting out, Oi, Daddy, help me. I'm not going to go into details, but it's not always his fingernails that get stuck. And when that happens, all I can do when it's not his fingernails is hold him.

And wait for nature to take its, you know, wait for everything to, wait for his temperature to go down, as it were. And then the fabric or the plastic or whatever that's kind of stuck, it's just naturally released. He squeals and tries to get out like, I'm holding on to you, mate.

That's the only thing I can do. We learn these things, don't we, when we have children. We learn.

I'm not saying that that happens with everyone's children. You just learn from trial and error, isn't it, I guess. He's, I know one thing that I realized about him is he doesn't like walking back.

So he likes to walk forward, as far forward as he can, until he gets tired. And then he wants me to carry him home. He doesn't like to walk home.

Or if he does walk home, he'll do it. So we walk all the way around the field, and we go home a different direction to the way we came. He doesn't like to go back the same direction.

I don't know why that is, but he just doesn't like it. He refuses a lot of time to even walk. If I try and walk backwards, back to where we came from, even though it's a long walk, it'll make out that he's too tired, but he'll happily walk twice the distance in a different direction, which is what I did today, or last night.

Took him for a walk, and it got to the point where he normally asks me to pick him up, but he didn't because we went a different direction. Went for a new park. He has been there before, but it's a long time since he was last there, probably over a year or two.

And he was loving it because there was trees, he was jumping over little trees, and it was all new, you know, mud and everything. And eventually I had to pick him up because he got tired, and I walked him back most of the way back, but I wasn't that far away from home. And then as I'm walking back with him, he sticks his head out, and he wants to walk back, and we just ran a corner from where I live at that point.

And one of my neighbours shouts out, because she's from a 1970s television show. Anyway, I said, I waved, I said hello, and she shouted out to me, she said, oi, get over here now. And I thought, oh no, she's found out.

And she said, she found out it was me. And she said, oh, I couldn't understand what she was saying because she was too far away. And she said, can my son see your, what do they call it, meerkat? And I said, yeah, let me just go and get my meerkat though.

I'll go to the zoo. She said, no, he's a ferret, he's not a meerkat. If I had a meerkat, I'd be getting stopped everywhere I went.

Meerkats are loved, aren't they? Because all the adverts on telly with meerkats on. Anyway, so I said, yeah, he can. And the little kid was sort of stroking Andre and stuff.

It was been a little bit rough with him. So she was saying, don't do that. And I was thinking, all I was thinking about was last night when he was scratching at the front door, and I was trying to do recording.

So I was thinking, yeah, be as rough as you like. And he kicked Andre. And it wasn't that hard.

He's only a little kid. So he couldn't have kicked hard anyway, but he kicked him, which was a bit not something that kids ever done to him before. And he didn't, Andre didn't even respond.

He walked over to me and to pick him up. So I picked him up, I put him inside my jacket. I said, better take him.

As I was walking away, I saw, I undid my jacket, see if he's okay. He'd let off the worst pong, which he does when he's angry. So he was angry at being kicked, but because it was a little kid, he'd never ever bite a kid.

But if that had been an adult, I don't know, it's, well, no one's ever kicked him before. That's the first time. I've trotted him a few times by accident, but no one's ever just gone and kicked him, which is not something that would happen, is it? Yeah.

So he was angry, proper, because he, as I said, you get to know, I got to know him, spent so long with him, he's got different smells he lets off. Sometimes he just lets smells off because that's how he is, but he doesn't let them off that often. But when he's angry, proper angry smell.

So I think he was a bit upset, but he was so good though. He didn't bite the kid, didn't bite his foot, bite his shoes or didn't like, you know, attack him or anything. Not that he would, but just if you get kicked, you know, you can expect a little bit of a reaction from the animal.

And Andre will never run away because he's not scared of anything. But he wasn't happy. So I had to give him extra cuddles.

At the same time thinking, you can scratch at the door tonight. A little child kicked you. No, I didn't.

I didn't think that. It was weird though, seeing the most important person in my life being kicked. Now after the fifth or sixth kick, I started to think, oh, perhaps I should stop it.

Yeah, it's just a one-off. I'm going to have to, I can't let him near the kid again though, after that. It's quite strange.

I never, he isn't around that many people at all other than me, but yes, he's seen lots of kids over the years, like in the park and neighbors, kids and stuff. And he's never, he's never been kicked. I don't think.

At least I hope not. Yeah. So it must have been very strange for him.

He wasn't happy, but it was okay. Once we got back, we talked about it and I said, look, I said, look, Andre, are you okay? I noticed, you know, he gave a little bit of a pong and you possibly ruined my jacket, but nevermind that. Are you okay? He looked at me and he said, dad, I told you before, I don't speak human.

I'm a ferret. He's so cheeky. Oh, that's a weird noise.

So let me see if I've got, if I've got any messages, have I got any messages at all from anyone? I want to say thank you to Jen for my soap. So I've got some soap that was ordered from my Amazon wishlist, my amazon.co.uk wishlist, which is on my website. So thank you.

That's lovely. Has a new message, new message. Okay.

So nothing there. No. Okay.

I can't see anything. Oh well. So yeah, I don't think there's any other messages at all, unless I've missed some.

So if you do want to leave a message, all right. Okay. There is one message I've just seen, but I can't read it out.

Okay. So that's just a personal, personal message. Yeah.

So yesterday was a bit of a weird, not a weird day, but I did some, I managed to do, I did three recordings or four recordings. So let me bore you to sleep, relaxation, hypnosis for stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. And also did a deep sleep whisper hypnosis recording as well.

So let's have a look. The ones I did. So yesterday did number 423, bore you to sleep.

Number 237, deep sleep whisper. I also did number 149, relaxation, hypnosis for stress. The title is called Relax forward slash sleep neurons dash lighting up.

How about that? It's a nice little title or really rubbish title, which you look at it. And I did two versions, one with and one without music. And it's based on neuroscience, that recording.

Getting very interested. I have been for a long time, but more and more interested in neuroscience and brain plasticity and basically what a lot of the specialists know, but don't necessarily understand why or how 100%, but they know that the brain can heal itself. And someone that has an injury, a brain injury or whatever, part of their brain perhaps is injured, but another part of the brain can take over and build new neurological connections so that the person can walk again or use their right arm or whatever it may be, speech, stuff like that.

So it's really fascinating. And the idea that this recording was based on is that tests have been done and the scientists have found out that when somebody is feeling, for example, someone's feeling positive or someone is feeling negative, it's a neurological pathway is lit up, actually lights up and they can see that with probes and stuff. So they know it's happening inside the brain.

Can't both happen at the same time. So you can't feel positive and negative at the same time. You can't feel relaxed and stressed at the same time.

Two different, completely different pathways. So when you focus on one pathway, it lights up and the other pathway doesn't. And the more you focus on that pathway and go down that pathway, the bigger the pathway gets, the easier it is to travel with it.

And the less you use the other pathway, the more overgrown it gets, the less easier it is to use. And it doesn't flow, you can't flow through it as easily. And it gets overgrown and clogged and blocked up and stuff.

So a way to get in touch with it, let's say, for example, feeling sleepy, get in touch with that sense of feeling sleepy. Or if it's positivity, get in touch with that feeling of positivity. Think of something that you're feeling positive about or you have felt positive about.

And then focus in your mind with your eyes closed on that pathway that lights up and just notice where it is. And even though it's in your imagination, it's still triggering that part of your brain, because you're feeling it. And you could only feel it if that part of your brain is actually being activated.

If that neural pathway wasn't being lit up, then you wouldn't have even the slightest feeling of positivity. So when you focus on the positivity, it lights up that neural pathway, which is the positivity. And then you focus on that, that light, that lit up pathway, and the feelings of positivity grow and grow and grow, become stronger.

And the more you focus on that, the more you go back and focus on that, the negative pathway is used less and less and starts to get overgrown and less easy to access. Yet the positive pathway becomes bigger, wider. It's almost like you're making a motorway out of it.

You can feel a lot of positivity through. And it becomes like it's a continuous, just continues to happen automatically, because that's what you've programmed your brain to do. So yeah, I find that really interesting.

And so I'm going to be doing more of that in the context of hypnosis, because if you think about it, hypnosis that's been happening for thousands of years, but it's been called hypnosis for the last couple of hundred years, I think. And there's basically, there's been a theory that it's imagination. Yeah, it's imagination, using your imagination to connect.

But the idea that it's somehow a different thing, you know, it's outside of you, and it's not. And almost like it's something separate from your brain. And it's not.

The brain produces the mind. The mind affects the brain. So the mind affects the brain, the brain affects the mind, just like having a relaxed body gives you a relaxed mind.

Relaxed mind increases the relaxation in your body, and so on and so forth. You know, it's that perpetual motion, I guess. But I think it's really fascinating that it's about the brain.

The brain produces the emotions, the brain produces the chemicals. I did this experiment, two experiments I did, and it did involve a mouse. So, you know, but they, it's all humane and not hurting anyone.

It's, but they're experimenting on the, you know, by changing the brain patterns, and lighting up a certain part of the brain. So that the mouse goes from being, they activate the brain part where the mouse is very nervous and hiding, to where the mouse is completely open and running around and searching for food, and, you know, and they could turn it on and off. I did another experiment where they could change the pattern from a mouse being hungry and eating because it's hungry, or eating for pleasure.

When it only ate for hungry, when it's hungry, it just looked around for food. When it had that, when it was in the brain, when it's the neural network, lit up the part which was responsible for the behavior of eating for pleasure, or eating from, you know, from an emotional perspective, the mouse was actually eating nothing. It was just doing the whole process with the fingers and eating the whole, it literally couldn't stop itself from doing it, even though there was no food there.

So that's an interesting thing. So that overeating, and I know a lot of people have that as an issue. And it's a different part of the brain being stimulated to the normal appetite.

And it's about correcting it so that the appetite, the normal part of the brain, which stimulates just normal appetite, instead of the eating for comfort. And literally, they kept changing it, switching it over between one and the other, which part was activated, and the behavior changed instantly. This is the same for us.

And they've proved that as well, because they can do, they've done tests on people with brains, people with brains, but they've done tests on people that have had brain operations and been awake, and they're sort of tested to see which one stimulated the sense of smell and memories and stuff like that. So this is all, you know, this is all my progression from that. It's been going on for many years.

And now they can electronically stimulate with those caps. He's making more noise than normal. And they can put those caps on, like skull cap, and stimulate the different parts of the brain to sort of, you know, activate memories and things like that.

And there's even someone went along, they've had a stroke, and they've had a brain or they've had a brain injury. And they've done a brain scan, and they could see the holes in the brain from the brain injury. And they started using this electric, like electric triggering thing, which sent little electric shocks into the brain, but not painful.

And they did it from just by putting this thing on their head, like a little clicky thing like that. And after doing that a few times, and a few sessions, they did another brain scan. And the part of the brain had healed.

The part that they focused on, the holes that filled up that healed. How amazing is that? It's one of those weird things that the brain is the only part of the person that isn't examined when someone's ill. It's the only part that isn't, you know, people get given medication or talking therapies, don't actually look at the brain.

And that's where the problem is, the brain. It's amazing. I find it fascinating.

So the possibilities is that in the future, whatever issues of like arisen that's caused the brain to be how it is can be corrected, or can be healed. Let's say healed. Corrected sounds like there's something wrong, but healed.

So the brain can be healed. And I like to think, just like all of our bodies, our bodies heal. You know, if you cut your finger by accident, it will heal.

You know it will, and it's good. And the same happens. And there's something, I think there's something, maybe I might be looking more into it, but when you can see it, by focusing on it, we send fresh blood to that part of the body, which then sends the healing, you know, the blood, the healing is in the blood, isn't it? It goes to that part of the body and gets cleaned out and, you know, gets healed.

But we can't see stuff that's going on inside us, can we? So maybe by visualizing stuff that's going on inside us in the same way as we can see something that's on our skin or outside, like a broken bone or something like that, by focusing on something that's inside and visualizing it, we can then send that healing to that part of the body. Because our bodies do heal. It's not some kind of esoteric, religiously supernatural, superstitious thing.

This is just a real thing. Our bodies heal. We heal ourselves all the time.

Heal, I said heal. So there's no belief system needed for this. This is just a fact.

I like facts. The thing I like about facts is there can't be any arguments with a fact. Plus I never argue with anyone anyway.

But I like facts, not opinions. So when I talk about something, not all the time, obviously, because I do talk a lot of rubbish, but when it comes to doing a recording based upon the latest scientific research, I think that's quite cool. I'm not sure if you get that very many places, how many people would integrate something that's quite old like hypnosis, mixing it with the very latest technology, the very latest research into how the brain works.

I like that. That interests me because what they're discovering and what hypnotists will discover is what they've been doing all along has been correct. But it hasn't just been about belief.

It's been almost factual. You focus on the part of body and the blood goes to that part of body. The blood, it's got healing in it.

It's got healing. I don't know all the biological aspects of it. I could study it, but I can't be bothered.

But we all know that that's true. I should look into it really, what the actual healing process is involved. But you know, Jason is actually Greek for healer or healing hands.

I found this out when I was in the early 20s. I remember saying, yeah, but I don't think that's going to hold up in court. But I have healing hands, Your Honour.

It's always like the idea of being a healer. I'll tell you the one bit of healing I did. Because I did learn Reiki and I had a friend that I was living with.

Well, he lived in the building that I lived in. There was one, two, three, four, five, six rooms. And he'd basically drunk himself into a stupor, like really, his liver gave up.

And he had jaundice and stuff. Anyway, I went to visit him and he was on loads of stuff in hospital and he really looked ill. He's the illest person I've ever seen.

And I remember I sat there and I held his hand. And I imagined that I was sending healing. I never told anyone this, actually.

But yeah, anyway, this is what I did. I imagined that I was sending healing into him and it was going into his liver and that it was spreading through his blood, the healing energy. And I kept saying to him, you're going to be fine.

And I was whispering to him, I suppose, probably like a hypnosis-y kind of thing. He was unconscious. He wasn't in a coma, but he was basically out of it.

And I just, I sat there for about half an hour to an hour and then I left. I didn't expect to see him again. I thought he was going to die.

I really did. And two days later, I'm going to go visit him in the hospital again, because I couldn't see him the next day because I was working or I was busy spending the money that I stole out of his wallet. No, I didn't.

And I got ready to go out. I thought I'd better go to the hospital and just see how he's doing. He's only standing there.

It's like downstairs and he's like chatting and laughing, looking so healthy, like nothing happened. How do you recover that quick from something that was... And he's really, yeah, he still glowed a bit. He's still a little bit glowy, but he was laughing and he didn't even know I'd visited him.

He was asking about, you know, if anyone's seen any money lying around because he's lost 50 quid out of his wallet. But he, it was just weird. And I'm not saying, it's the only time I've ever really done anything like that.

I've done hypnosis many times, but I've never done anything where I was really focusing on healing, to get his body to heal himself. But in a way, I was almost feeling like I was channeling or trying to take out the bad stuff or the unhealthy stuff, the poison or whatever it was in his system and to sort of take that out of him, of his body. The nurse caught me and said, what are you doing? So I had to sort of make excuses.

So I was just kissing him. I was kissing him goodbye. No, I wasn't.

Why do I say these silly things? Anyway, yeah, that was weird, a weird situation. I don't know how he is now. I haven't seen him since 2005, I suppose, 2006.

No, I might have seen him in 2006, maybe even 2007 because I used to visit. I still used to go back and visit even when I moved out because I was one of the blokes that I was really good friends with. And also another one I was good friends with as well.

And I used to just, I don't know why, I just sort of kept in touch. Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking of that.

I don't know what got me thinking of that stuff. Maybe it's the socialist newspaper that I used to read. I doubt it.

I really don't know. How did I get onto that? Yes, it's a weird house. What was weird? I'll tell you the weirdest situation about it was I decided not to drink for a whole year and I didn't.

So for New Year's Eve 2004, well New Year's Eve 2003, so New Year's Day 2004 all the way to New Year's Eve 2000. No, New Year's Day 2004, New Year's Eve 2003 to New Year's Eve 2004. Although I didn't drink alcohol on New Year's Eve 2004, but you know that my sobriety came to an end on that night.

And so I moved into this place and everyone was drinking like heavy, apart from one person who had a a den that was closed down. Everyone else was basically extreme drinkers. One, two, three, four.

And it was me. So I got on with all of them. There's one I didn't really know very well and he just kind of kept himself to himself.

But the one next to me I got on really well with and the one just below me and then the one at the bottom, that's the one who was in hospital. And then the bloke next to him who had the den that was closed down by the police. I got on well with him as well.

It was really weird that suddenly I ended up in this house that was the complete opposite to what I needed for having a sober year. Very strange. And I didn't touch alcohol at all and I was around.

I wasn't, I was around it but I didn't spend much, didn't spend time. Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time around it but I knew people there was just always drunk. Oh wow.

It's very, very weird. That's it Andre, now that I've nearly finished the recording, you can finish your, yeah, whatever it was you were doing. You know what I was doing? Yeah, I do.

I was having a nice drink. It's built up a bit of a thirst. What's kind of strange is, so I went from living in the YMCA, which was a very, should we say, eclectic group of people, from refugees, homeless people, and people that were very troubled and mean, and probably some other people.

There's a lot of quite young people that were getting help, basically YMCA is there to help people. I just managed to get a flatlet studio apartment and they helped me as well, actually, at one point. But I moved out of there to end up in a house of, you could say kind of disrepute, but not, you know, house of excesses.

And then I went from that to live in a Buddhist community and then I started drinking again. How weird is that? I could easily not drink when I was around alcoholics, but around Buddhists teetotal Buddhists, I needed to drink. I didn't need to, but I did.

How weird. My life has been very strange, so it has. Andre is now climbing through his plastic tunnel, which is lovely.

Thanks, Andre. How wonderful. You are a pleasure.

Oh, yes. The thing is, I've been eating these meals, these frozen meals and stuff, and I'm fed up with them. I don't know what it is, it just doesn't, I can't be bothered to cook anything.

I do need to eat, but I'd much prefer... Andre, can you hear him? I knocked over his bowl earlier, the head, his dry food in, so I just left it on the floor, because that's what he does anyway. He picks them out, drops it on the floor and then he breaks them up on the floor, so I thought I'd just leave them on the floor for him. I just saw him there, he was knocking the bowl.

They're all there in front of you. I do sometimes think he'd like to eat more. Maybe I should give him two packets of food a day, but he's always got dry food.

I can always eat that, it's always available to him. It's good for his teeth, it's good for his... It's got vitamins and stuff in there that he needs. Lovely Andre, thanks.

Another bit of carpet ruined. But then he has the wet food with gravy, the whiskers, and he probably would be happy to have two packs a day. But I don't see the point, because he's a nice weight, he's thin, he's fit, and he's not hassling me for food.

If he wanted the wet food, what he would do is keep... He'd just done it. Wow. But he would knock the plate and he'd keep looking at me, and he'd knock the empty plate and he'd keep looking back at me, so to let me know that he wanted some more food.

But he's not doing that. He's happy enough just to have the dry food. Because it's now about nine minutes to one in the morning.

Now he's had his little bit of exercise. He'll have a little munch. He'll go back and have another drink of water, maybe a couple of times in between eating the dry food.

And he'll probably retire for a few hours. I'd see him probably till about four, maybe five. See, if he got messy, then I would feed him.

If he grew, you know like goldfish, they grow to their surroundings. Or if I thought he would become as big as a dog, I would feed him. I'd feed him every hour.

If I could get him as big as a dog, it'd be brilliant. It just would be difficult to handle, to be fair, because he's so strong now. If he was the size of a dog, his jaw would be way stronger than any other dog on the planet, because their jaws are just a lot stronger than dogs in comparison.

You know, obviously size-wise, he hasn't got the size. But if he was the size of a pit bull or an Alsatian, wow. An Alsatian wouldn't want to dance with him, mind you.

I wouldn't be able to cuddle him, because he'd be too big. Imagine if he wanted to play fight. That'd just be impossible.

Well, mind you, because I've had him since a little baby, he won't know how big he is, so I'll be able to tell him off. And if he had to... Oh, wait a minute, he doesn't listen to me now, does he? No, he doesn't. No.

I'll have to call the doctors and find out whether or not they've done that bus pass letter. My doctor's surgery's really gone downhill. I don't like answering the phone, that's for sure.

Anyway, why don't you apply and send a letter, contact us online. No, I'll phone him. Did you just hear that in the background? That's it, don't forget to wipe yourself on the carpet.

And we've gone to sleep. It's basically, I've got the door, and it's got a chain on it on the inside to hold it back against the wall. That way he can't get his tail caught in between the door frame.

I did it for here and in the bedroom as well, because he got stuck once. So I've kind of done that. So now, it's just big enough for him to get in and out.

So he sleeps on a jumper behind the door. It's his little space, and it's just wide enough for him to get in and out easily. It's literally as wide as he is.

But now he's sleeping inside the tracksuit bottoms, done outside of the door. So he sort of moves in between each one. It might be a bit cold, which I don't understand considering he's got a fur coat on.

I wouldn't have thought he'd feel the cold, but he does. But then his belly in this woolly area kind of is quiet, and there's not really much hair there. So maybe he feels it there.

So I suppose I could make him a little pair of underpants or something, a little vest. Some thermals, long johns. They have to be short johns, wouldn't they, for him, because he's only got little legs.

Little tracksuit. Yeah, I could get him a little tracksuit. That'd be cool.

That'd be funny. He doesn't like being dressed up. He doesn't.

I've done it before. He did not like it. I got this... I had two costumes.

One was... No, three. I've had three costumes for him in the past. One was like a fairy.

I think it was fairy wings. One was center outfit, and another one was like a green... What's the little gremlins, the Irish gremlins? They attack people with four-leaf clovers or something. Anyway, he had the center hat on, and it was winter.

It was snowing, and I'm just laughing at him. It's tickling me because he's got this coat on with a furry... Basically, it's a little Santa suit and a hat on. Just his public humiliation was just... It was a treat.

It was a real treat for me. And I looked down at him, and basically, he'd been digging, and he had none of the stuff on. He buried it.

He buried the hat and the top. He got out of the top, and he got rid of the hat. He buried it.

I didn't know where it was. I looked back, and there was nowhere to be seen. He always used to dig in the snow and stuff because he was quite little.

He'd end up in the snow, but he made sure that it was gone. I think probably about a month later, I found the hat, but it was inside a hole in the ground, so I didn't go anywhere near it. I thought, such a shame.

He looked lovely. He just looked... I used to have a video. I wish I keep some of my videos.

I did a video on Christmas Day, the very first year that I had him. So it's five years ago. I don't know how many years ago.

And it'd be, I guess it's Christmas 2015. And I'd wrapped up loads of presents, loads of stuff for him, and just loads of general things, cans of Coke and Maltesers and books, and just so I had something to open. And I had presents for him as well.

And I videoed it. I taped it. I stuck it on YouTube and Facebook and that.

And he was still little then because I got him in September. So he was only five months old at Christmas. And he's little now, but he was very little.

And it was funny just seeing him, like scratching at the wrapping paper and stuff. And I think I dressed as... I had a Santa hat on as well. But yeah, I might have it on my hard drive somewhere.

Because I did store quite a few of my Jason Chat videos. I've got about 30 or 40, maybe more of them somewhere. Yeah, I'd like to do a little collection.

So I'll go through, just select through the videos where Andre's on there, and just show those clips. So none of the clips of me talking or anything, just the clips of Andre playing around and doing stuff like that. I had videos of him attacking a banana and everything.

This is when he was tiny, when I first got him, when he was a baby. I had a settee and he ruined the settee. But I was constantly buying stuff for him to play with.

And he just tried to ruin everything. Honestly, he did. He was so full of energy.

It was brilliant. It's a lot of fun. He's not like that anymore.

He's much more chilled out. But he was just nonstop, just like a kitten really. Kittens are so much fun when they're little.

And the energy level is like, wow. It's like puppies as well, just nonstop energy. And although some dogs keep it up, don't they? Even as they get older, they've still got a lot of energy and stuff.

But Andre's a lot more chilled. It might be due, but I know it's probably not, but we rub off on each other, I suppose, a bit. Sounds weird, doesn't it? But he's taking the food out of the bowl, not off the floor.

He, maybe because he's calm and I'm fairly calm and maybe we kind of, I don't know, affect each other in a calm way. Mind you, I'd say I'm probably calmer than him, apart from when I'm not. Anyway, so I'm going to go.

I'm sure I have more than one message to read. I might have done, but I have to have a look. So I'm going to go.

So thank you for listening. I can't believe I've managed to talk for 78 minutes about nothing. Again, absolutely nothing for 78 minutes of nothingness.

Wow. Imagine if I actually had something to talk about. Wow.

You know, I've been looking online. I still, you know, someone said online, you should sort of put down what you are, what you do, you know, on your website and on your Facebook page. And they said, not to me, but just sort of saying generally, a lot of people don't put down at the podcasters.

And if you've been doing podcasting, if you do that, you should let people know. And I'm one of the original podcasters. I know I say that about a lot of things, but it's true.

I had my first podcast in 2007. I think 2007 was my first podcast. So yeah, 13 years ago.

Now podcasting, it gained some interest for a little while, but it never became popular. It's much more popular now, over the last few years. But you know, I've been doing it a long, long, long time, many, many years.

And it's really only the last few years that it's become, I suppose, quite, yeah, sort of the audience seems to have grown. So they've just grown. Now they've grown.

I mean, my SoundCloud podcast I had in the past was, before I deleted it, I think I had about 250,000 plays or downloads over my two year period, I think. And then I decided to focus on Spreaker, which I don't regret a Spreaker, but I do. I wish I hadn't got rid of the SoundCloud, because I had a fair following there.

And I was getting, I don't know how many downloads I was getting a day. I suppose over 100,000 a year. 100, yeah, so I was getting probably 10,000, 15,000 a month.

I know it's not a lot compared to what I get now, but it's still, you know, I do have a, I've started another SoundCloud podcast, and it's still in the free version. So I'm not sure if I'm going to pay for the monthly, if I can't do it until Wednesday anyway, if I do do it. But I might just build it up and then just let it just, just add every new recording and just not do anything.

Just leave it there. And if it gains listeners and stuff, because a lot of people still use SoundCloud. So I won't promote it or anything.

I'll just leave it on there and maybe people will listen. And it's just an extra audience, isn't it? It's a different audience. I've got a Podbean podcast.

Podbean podcast. And I kind of, I've had that for a few years, but I deleted, I didn't delete the podcast, I deleted the subscription. And now I've re-subscribed last week or a few days ago and I'm in the process of doing some stuff on there.

So I might just leave that up as well. So I might get a Soundcloud up, leave the Podbean one up, leave the Spreaker ones up and maybe open a few other podcast hosts just there, you know, for people to listen to different audiences. You never know, it might, you know, if it's only a few thousand people a month come to each one, that's alright.

It's still nice, still people that might benefit, might like what I do. You never know, it might be possible. So yeah, that was boring wasn't it, that last bit.

No matter how boring the rest of the recording was, the last bit was the most recording. The last bit was the most recording bit. It was the most boring part, I do believe.

I really do believe, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I want to eat something but I don't want to eat anything. I wonder what I could eat.

Anyway, I'm gonna go. Thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye, bye.