#436 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (23rd 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.

I know it's probably hard to believe that this is going to be boring when you first hear my voice. Because I do have a rather exciting voice. But it's okay, I've done this before and I'll try to make my voice sound a bit boring eventually.

So please, please forgive the hugely expressive voice that I currently have. But I will try to, you know, change it. Just like you know, I just had a lovely review on my website.

And it says, it's from Magdalene Cartwright Jr. And it says small frozen keyboard. Yeah, so that's good. Magdalene Cartwright.

That sounds, Magdalene sounds like a female name. But Junior, never ever heard of a female being called Junior. I might be wrong.

But I don't recall it ever having happened in the history of the world until now. So yeah, I did, I did some recordings yesterday, or this morning. And yeah, things are going really good.

So I'd like to say thank you to everybody for listening to my stuff. I do have other podcasts, the, what do I do? I do have, I can't remember what I do. I do do other stuff.

And so I've got a deep sleep whisper hypnosis recordings, the sleep hypnosis weekly recordings, and the relaxation hypnosis for stress, anxiety and panic attacks, recordings or podcasts, as well as other stuff, relaxation hypnosis podcast is the self help podcast is the yeah, there's a few. So yeah, thank you for those of you that listen to moi, moi. I haven't said that, I don't think ever.

Now just said it twice. No weird. So it's 341 in the afternoon.

So there may be well, there's a good chance there's going to be some background sounds of some kind. At the moment, it's just the little birdies twittering along in the trees. I can hear the sound of the fridge in the kitchen, even though I've got the door pretty much closed in the kitchen.

I've got the window closed. I've got the curtains drawn. And I'm wearing socks.

This is boring, isn't it? It's even too boring for me. So yeah, so things are going quite well. Not a lot really has happened since yesterday, if I'm honest with you.

Not a huge amount. I've got Andre's x ray tomorrow. And I'm just wondering how it's going to work because I have to catch the nine o'clock bus.

I've counted how many spaces that actually were on the bus the other day. And I think there was seven spaces available for people to actually sit down because of the social distancing. Now, even if in reality, even if I don't know, but today, the President of England is going to be talking about, Alexander Johnson is going to be talking about reducing, possibly, or maybe not today, but hopefully this week, reducing the distance from two meters to one meter.

It's like brilliant. I've got to now learn another measurement. Great.

And I was with my friend today, just now, and we were discussing it. And I said to him, he's really good at measurements. And I said, so do you think this is about a meter then apart? And he said, yeah, it's about a meter.

I said, well, who would want to be closer than a meter? Who would actually want to be closer than that, unless you were, you know, in love with the person and you wanted to cuddle them? A meter away is, that's, I would say that is personal space distance. Personally, I prefer two meters, but especially in shops, I love, I love the idea now that, you know, when I go in the garage and get my stuff, I'm standing at the till and there's nobody up my bum waiting to get served. Literally, people used to be so close.

I'd like to say, well, do you want my bank card number as I, do you want to type it in for me as I pay? It's really close, like, come on, a bit of distance, please, my old friend. So maybe, I was going to say, I mean, the idea, I was gonna say, maybe society's learnt, learnt to a little bit of spatial awareness, but learnt, I mean, when do people learn? I mean, how often does society learn anything? Let's go back to what we did before, I imagine. I know I do.

How often do we actually learn from anything that happens? I never learn, I've never learned one thing. Constantly making the same mistakes. Still, I am still making the same silly choices that I did years ago and thinking, why did I do that? I mean, the one good thing about all the shops becoming open is I can get back to shoplifting.

I miss that, just the thrill and everyone needs a hobby and mine happens to be shoplifting. Of course, you have to be very strong because some of those shops are heavy. So, also a big thank you to everyone that helped with towards my paying for the podcast hosting.

I know I kind of said thank you yesterday, but I want to do another thank you. I'm British, I have to say thank you and sorry a lot. I've been brought up to do it.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. When I've actually had people banging to me in the street and I said sorry to them, I apologized. And then afterwards I thought, oh, what did I do that for? This is in built, inbred.

It is, it's just, that's why I don't have such a huge problem with some people that are horrible, that would be classed as horrible. Because a lot of those people, they might have really nasty views, but they've been raised like that. They don't know.

It's natural for them. It comes naturally because from the day they were born until the age of being able to know the difference, it's, you know, they can't all be to blame. I think it's, you know, if they could use some intelligence to sort of get some education and start to choose for themselves.

But I think it's even harder for people. So if they've got that really strong, I'm not going to go into a really strong anti-societal view about a certain group of people, for example, whatever that group of people may be. If they, if they have like a parent, like a father who has those views, that's where they've kind of got it from.

But if they really get on well with their father, really close, the harder it is to break those views because they're almost breaking connection with their parent. So if you're lucky enough, you know, if you've got a parent that's really got horrible views about a group of people, and you don't perhaps get on with them so well, it's much easier to break them, to break that stuff. You know, I was brought up to be homophobic, racist, everything.

Hard to believe, but that's what it was like in the 70s. It was just standard. You know, everything that wasn't, it was a little bit different, was feared or mocked or whatever.

You know, it's, I think the differences for me is, well, from the age of seven, I lived in a town. I think there was like one black child in the entire town and his family. And there's one Chinese family that had a Chinese takeaway.

It was just, you know, it's a predominantly, not predominantly, but like 99.9999% white English little seaside town. But I'd lived in a children's home with people from all over the place. So, you know, my, one of my main memories is there's this black family that were there, they were kids the same age as me.

And there was a girl and I was fascinated with her hair. And she used to let me comb her hair. And the first time I did it, I hurt her.

I didn't mean to, because I didn't, I didn't need, I didn't know I had to be gentle. But I really liked her and we were good friends. And then her mum turned up and her mum was absolutely crazy.

And I don't use that word generally. But she turned up and to visit or whatever. But she was screaming at everybody.

I mean, she was really, I guess, really ill, or really angry. And I think her kids hid, because I'm like, I hid as well. But you know what? When I was that age, I know that I didn't see any difference.

For me, it wasn't like, oh, colour of the skin is different. For me, it was, oh, the hair. But it was fascinating.

I was like, oh, I like, I like your hair. Perhaps I should have been a hairdresser. But I was fascinated with her hair, because she, she used to have this comb that used, I think it was wooden, I think.

And I think, I think even her sister or something, they let me braid her hair as well. So yeah, I was only little, I was only like five or six. But you know, it's, it was fun.

So it was quite strange to go from that to being in a town that was, and not the most open-minded, if we should want to say that. And I started to think, oh, is this how I'm supposed to think? This is how I'm supposed to react to people? I couldn't really get it. It's like, well, so I've got a hate, I'm supposed to dislike millions and millions and millions of people, because that's what the teachers are like, because that's what the teachers say.

Or my teachers would be family, friends, the television, it's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. You know, I think we should reserve hatred for people, individuals that deserve it. And that only occasionally, you know, the occasional person in life.

And even then, hopefully try and let it go. Weird. I don't want to talk about this, but oh no, my knee is starting to move to the ground.

Oh, it's, I never really understood it. Really, from a young age, it's like, well, why are you all just, why can't we just get on? Because when I was a kid, most of the people that I, so many of the people that I liked watching on television, were not white. You know, like Mr. T, he was like a massive hero, you know, in the A-team.

He was my favorite. I think he was everyone's favorite in the A-team. I quite liked Murdoch.

But Mr. T, because he was big and tough and like, yeah, I think everybody wanted to be big and strong like Mr. T, but all the boys, wasn't so sure about the Mohican, if I'm honest. And then, well, my favorite singers, Michael Jackson, my favorite female singer, but I suppose probably still is Whitney Houston. I mean, for me, Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman ever in the world.

That's how I used to see her. Like, she was just perfect, you know, it's like an angel, sung like an angel. I used to, I just couldn't understand it.

So why, why are you all like this then? If you, like the most famous people. I don't get it. It's really weird.

I mean, I know people that still use language that is, but that should probably get you arrested. If you said it near a police person, will get you into a lot of trouble if you shouted out on a train or a bus, possibly. And then I thought, sometimes people don't use that language because of that's how they are.

But if they're in an argument with somebody, you know, if someone's in an argument and they're getting into a fight, I don't do that stuff because I'm an adult, but they will say the worst possible thing that they can say. And if you don't know the person, if you don't know the person you're dealing with personally, you're limited to what you can say that can hurt them, that can upset them. Not that I really would want to do that.

I'd rather just shoot them. And yeah, I suppose I'm thinking about this because there is something on the news. This triggered my thinking.

I don't know what countries I'd like to go to. I don't, I don't fancy going to India. It's never, it's not really appealed to me.

Or even Africa. I think partly because of the heat. I know it's not always hot, but just, it looks really nice in some ways, but not, I like lions, but not, not that much.

So to go on to a safari, I don't think I'd really want to do that because I've been in cars that broke down before and that's annoying. I imagine it'll be a bit more annoying if I was surrounded by lions and the car is open and all you've got is just one person there with one rifle. Like, yeah, okay, this is going to be interesting.

Where would I like to go? See, because I don't speak any other languages, I want to go somewhere where people can speak English. And I know, you know, it's, some people would say, oh, that's just a typical Englishman expects everyone else to speak English. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't expect anything, but I want it. I don't expect it. You know, I, I do want it.

I do want everyone to be able to speak English so that I can communicate with them. I mean, the idea, you go on holiday to Spain for a week, you could try and learn Spanish just because you're going to be in Spain for a week on holiday. No, this is funny.

Some people do. I actually had this friend and we went into a Spanish restaurant and she used to go to Spain every year. Her mom lived in Spain.

So she, she did know some Spanish, some Spanish language and she, she was brushing up on it all week. She was looking forward to going to this restaurant. I think it was when I was at college and we went in there because she wanted to speak Spanish and show off.

But it wasn't really because she actually told everyone, you know, she's just looking forward to seeing how her Spanish was because she liked speaking Spanish. You notice how I changed it from showing off to backtracking because I won't say anything bad about her because she helped me get my degree. So I will never, ever say a bad word against her.

She's an amazing person. So that's it. And anyway, she's all excited.

And I'm almost excited for her because she's really, it was quite contagious. She was like really buzzing with my home, you know, when the waitress, the waitress or waiter, whoever came over, she was going to be ordering everything in Spanish because it was, I think like a tapas bar or something. And the waiter turned up and she started ordering.

And it was, I think it was a man. He said, what? She said, I'm speaking in Spanish. She said, no, I'm from Romania.

She did all that. She was so disappointed. And I was about to say, haven't you got a Spanish waiter that we can have? And then I thought, no, I can't say that, can I? That's going to sound awful.

In fact, I might have said that, but I would have sort of said, cause she wants to speak Spanish. Haven't you got anyone Spanish that she can speak to? It was just funny because she'd been rehearsing all week preparing to order a meal and all that stuff. Well, that tapas bar, it's not really a meal, is it? It's lots of stuff.

I love tapas bars. I do. Oh, I do.

Oh, I used to go with my cousin and my cousin's dad. And we used to, when I call him my cousin, he was my cousin. And his dad wasn't my uncle, but I used to call him uncle, but it used to annoy him.

But basically, his mum, okay, my cousin's mother, my cousin's mother's mother was my grandmother's sister. Does that make sense? So her sister gave birth to a girl, who became a lady, who then gave birth to my cousin, who then became a lady, who then gave birth, well, didn't give birth, but surrogated, a penguin. I don't know.

So he, I think he was about 17, 18. And he went through this phase where he was really, really confident. And he got to know people.

And he'd made a really, I think he's a policeman now, actually. But he could have had a really good life. You know, when he told me he was a policeman, I was a little bit disappointed.

Not that he's a policeman, because, you know, someone's got to do that work. But just, he was so gifted as a musician. Really gifted, a really, really brilliant musician.

As a child, he could play the keyboard, he could play the guitar and bass. He knew how to create music using a computer. And this was back in 2000, 1999, 2000, when the software was not that great, but he could produce really good stuff.

Because his dad was in a band. His dad had been in a band for the last 40 years, since the 60s. A professional, as a country and Western singer, or country, he was the guitar player.

But in a country, I think it was one of the biggest country and Western bands in England. Like, kept winning awards and stuff. I didn't actually know there was a country and Western circuit.

I mean, I knew, I know in America, it's huge. It's just massive in America. Didn't know it was big in England, but it is what it used to be.

But it's almost, it's known by those that go, if that makes sense. It's not. It's really big.

I went to one of his gigs. And it was, it was really, I'm saying the word really, but really, really, really good. And his dad had been doing it so long.

It was almost like he was asleep and his hands were just doing what they did. Like he was just playing, playing himself in his sleep, or playing with a guitar rather. And because he'd been doing it for so many years, it just, there was no effort at all.

He was a brilliant guitarist. And he, his son, I guess he taught his son how to play the guitar, how to play the keyboard, unless he taught himself. And then the whole making music with his friends.

And I don't know, I would say he was potentially a prodigy, musical prodigy. It might sound a little bit over the top, but he was really talented from a very, very early age. It's almost he inherited his dad's genes of being musical.

And, you know, he fell in love. And as far as I know, he's still with the lady he fell in love with. He's had a couple of kids.

And blimey, how old would he be now? Wow. He'd be probably nearly 40 now. Yeah, he's got to be.

He was in 2000, he was about, I'd say about 18. So he's got to be 38, 39 now. It was quite weird, though, because we made some music together, me and him and his dad.

And I wrote the songs. I sung and they helped. Well, they didn't help with the music, they made the music to accompany me or, you know, it kind of went in different ways, but we spent hours and hours doing it.

And, you know, back in that time, we recorded on a four track recording studio, like a portable thing. I think I bought one. It was a Tesco, Tesco, I think.

Anyway, I bought, I got that. And we recorded it, and then put it onto a tape. I've still got the tapes.

And I actually converted them into files. So I've actually got the files as MP3s on my computer or somewhere. And I posted them on Facebook for people to listen to.

And my cousin contacted me, this is a couple of years back, because I was living here. So maybe two or three years ago, he said, Can you please take my name off of that? He was embarrassed to be associated with the songs. Wow.

I was really pleased with the songs. I know it's a long time ago, the qualities on what it could be now, you know, all the technology and stuff. And I don't know, maybe it's being associated with me singing.

I don't really know. But he was wasn't happy. So I took his name off.

Wow, that's weird. He was a really, really talented musician. And also, he's the one that got me into web design.

Because his dad was learning how to code. Okay, and this was what, 1999, 2000. His dad was learning how to code and build websites, you know, from code, HTML.

It was HTM back then, I forget. And my cousin was doing as well, he was showing me how, because he was, he was picking it up really quickly, because he was really young. And he was easily did it really simply.

And I got bit by the bug. I really did. And I became obsessed with websites, building them.

I'm talking obsessed, I'm talking kind of where I am, I guess, with this stuff, you know, continuously doing it, all I think about. But that was, it was a really nice time in my life. Didn't last long.

Yeah, lasted for about four months, five months. And that I could just, I gave everything, you know, all my time for the 16 hours a day, in front of the computer, making these websites, web pages, learning how to do. I literally, I had books as well, I had loads of books on how to do code that I'd purchased.

And that was before Amazon was around, so I would have got them from the bookshop. Do you remember those bookshops? Do you remember? And the hyperlink, which is what you click on when you're on a website, click on a link, and it takes you somewhere else. Yeah, that's what they call a hyperlink.

And that's just for people who don't know what it is. I could have found out within 30 seconds how to put a hyperlink together by reading a book. But I decided not to do it that way.

So what I did is I copied a website page and had the code. And basically, it was in Notepad. So you could change the code in Notepad and then open up in Internet Explorer, and the webpage would show.

You didn't even have to be online to do it. It just showed you what the webpage would be. I spent, I think, two days dissecting this one page so that I could figure out how to put a link in, how to put that hyperlink.

So I kept taking bits off, seeing if it worked, then adding it back on. Doing that, it got to the point where I just had this bunch of code, like a paragraph. And then I started taking little bits off of that.

And, you know, you can go, like, bold. And I did the same with pictures, how to put pictures in, how to make the text italic or underlined, different colored writing, all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I don't know why, but I really enjoyed it.

And, yeah, I built my own websites right up to 2005. So for the next five years, or six years, whatever you want to class it as, because I had websites from 2000 onwards to today. So it's 20 years.

I've had hundreds of websites. And we had this thing, me and my cousin, we put together a business idea, and we were going to have a website which promoted sports and fitness. And we had an appointment at the bank to see if we could get a business loan and support to get to launch it.

And it wasn't much like it on the internet at the time. And so what we did is, it came to the day before. And we had the appointment probably half 11 in the afternoon, in the morning rather.

And we realized that we were nowhere close having, we didn't have the whole, we didn't need to have the whole website complete. But we did need it to be explainable, you know, so we need to be able to demonstrate the website. I mean, now, in this situation, if I was going to do something like that, I would have a complete website built, I guess, as I do now.

And, you know, but back then, I didn't really know what I was doing. And it was all new, really. So we spent all night in this room, where he had all his equipment, his music equipment, and he was working on one laptop, I was working on another laptop.

The laptops in 2000, there were little things, but I didn't have a laptop, I was still using a computer. I didn't get my first laptop. So I was till about 2004, I think, that we were just trying to build individual pages and add in content.

And we were listening to music all night. And I was quite a nice night, actually, it was quite cool. Because he was, he was to me, even though he's my cousin, he felt more like a little brother.

But he really did. You know, he's, I was very close to him. And it did, it did feel like he was my little brother.

But I haven't seen him for, I haven't seen him since 2003, I think. Yeah, so a fair bit of time at 17 years. So when I first moved away from London, whenever I went to London, I'd sort of maybe try and visit and pop in and say hello and stuff.

But then it became less and less often, to the point of rarely ever going to London. And now I don't really go at all. Well, not, I haven't been anywhere for months.

But, you know, even generally, last time I went to London was when my friend opened a comedy club. This was about two years ago. It was a comedy night on a Saturday night.

And he asked me if I could just be on the door. So I went there. He just paid me the expenses, travel.

And I mean, just, yeah, he did it basically to help me get out. Because he thought it'd be good for me to just, you know, get away from here and go, you know, just have a little bit of a social situation. So I did that for, I did it a couple of weeks, but I just couldn't handle the travelling.

It was just, I was, yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't so much getting there, but getting back. And there was coaches, there was no, not even any trains, it was a bus service. And I'd end up walking back from the train station at 1.30 in the morning.

I just, oh, so it wasn't, yeah. And it just wasn't the same either as what it used to be like. Because where I was, the comedy evening was downstairs.

So I was basically in a hallway on my own as people turned the corner, you know, took their money, or if they'd paid online, I'd just, you know, check them off a list and I'd sort of send them in directions downstairs. So I didn't really get to speak to anyone. In the old days, at the other club, I'd, people would come in, I'd be standing there, but everyone that came in, I'd be able to see everybody and they'd be able to see me.

And I'd get to sort of chat to people and the staff and, you know, but it wasn't, that wasn't really the issue. It was more just the travelling. I couldn't, couldn't really face it.

It was a bit too much. But anyway, we did, me and my cousin, we did put this website together and we went to the bank. I think it was Lloyd's TSB.

And I remember exactly where it was. It was in Stratford, opposite Stratford shopping centre, as it was back then. You know, the entrance, I had no idea what's there now, because it's huge changes since I lived there.

It might be a completely different entrance, but when I moved away, there was a McDonald's on the corner. So there probably was then as well. But most of the time that I lived there, there wasn't a McDonald's.

But just when I moved out, there was a McDonald's and there was a Burger King further up inside the centre as well, the shopping centre. And then, since then, they've built the, I don't know what they call it, like the shopping mall in Stratford. Apparently it's massive.

I forget what it's called, I don't care either. Never been there. But that whole area I used to walk through from work, back in like 91, 92, 93, used to walk sometimes if I was going to go to, so if I want to go to the shopping centre to get some food, or if I wanted to go to a tube station, instead of going all the way around the roads, I'd just walk through the old train graveyard, as it seemed to be.

It was all part of the old docks. And there was just, apparently you weren't allowed on that area where it was private property. But I used to walk across there with my friends sometimes to get to the tube station.

Massive area, an absolutely huge amount of waste ground that you wouldn't even know was there. And I'm just like, what? Why? I used to think to myself, why is this just left like this? Even then, you know, there was a shortage of housing and stuff like that. And it started, the councils had started to knock down the high-rise flats.

And then building low versions, you know, maybe two storeys high, which meant they needed more room and more space to do it. Because the benefits of the high-rise flats was you could fit a lot of people into one small bit of area. Yeah, I used to, of course, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that have lived in those places over the years.

But some people wouldn't realize that those original flats were big. They were big old places, you know, and they were sturdy, very big, concrete. And I've lived in, what have I lived in? I mean, this is a council flat I'm in now, but this is just two storeys high.

The other, when I was very young, I lived in a big block of, you know, a huge block of flats in Newcastle. Oh, you know, I've just seen, I felt a little bit sad. I was slightly annoyed that Andre made all that noise just now, coming out of behind the, he just touted at me.

I don't know what he's going to do. He's now going to let off a stink bomb just near my chair. Hello, mate.

I was trying to find a way into the, oh yes. See the track suit bombs that were on the floor that he likes to sleep in. I pushed him closer to the wall because he was right in the middle of the carpet yesterday.

And now he's trying to struggle to get in there because he had his little openings all ready for him. But he got in, that's good. No, I just felt a little bit sorry for him because he was, he scratches with his back legs.

So when he's got an itch, he scratches with his back legs. That's just the way he does it. And he went to do it with his bad leg and he couldn't, so he, he sort of fell over.

I just, oh, oh, see, I've got the vet tomorrow. So hopefully I'm going to have to be really, really firm with them and say, look, you're given the x-ray, make sure it's going to be 120 pound, not a penny more, because I don't have any other money to give you. And if he needs treatment, you do not give him treatment because I'm going to have to come back in a few weeks to do that.

Because if they sort of come out with me and say, oh yeah, we did this and it's going to be 450 pound, they're going to have to keep him. So I'm going to have to be very firm, very firm. So yeah, that's going to be, I'll be glad when that's all over though, I'll tell you when I just, it's weird that sometimes like suddenly, hey, money is required from everywhere.

So I'll be glad in a couple of months. I think by August, I'll be starting to get straightened out. Financially, things will start to come together a bit better.

So it's only just over a month away. Was it end of June? Yeah, two months. So two months by the end of August, just after my birthday, things will start to come together.

So I just got, and I also realized that yesterday, last night, I've been, it's a thing, I've been eating these meals that are for pensioners. They get delivered, because the only place I could get anything delivered for the last three months was from this place. And I can't stand them anymore.

Even though there's nothing wrong with them, I just can't. The idea of eating them, I don't want to, I don't want to eat. I'd rather not eat than eat them.

It's weird. I don't know why. I think there's a, there's possibly a psychological thing going on there as well.

Because I'm not, I'm not a pensioner. I'm not in my 80s. I don't want to be eating that stuff.

It's something, I don't know, I've still, I'm just in the process of building something, building a life for myself. I'm not the end. I'm kind of at the beginning, in a sense.

So what surprised me though is the box, which has got all the stuff in it, I think I've got about eight left, eight meals left. I went to the freezer, pulled the box out, and underneath the box was stuff that I could actually cook. And I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten it was there.

So I had fish fingers. So what I did yesterday is I cooked myself a meal for the first time in months. Like an actual cook, went to the oven, cooked it.

Outside of maybe sausage rolls that I had in the past, but I haven't turned the cooker on for ages. So I had fish fingers, chips and beans. And I've got beans thanks to Rachel.

She gave me enough beans to last me for a while. And thank you. And it was the best, most enjoyable meal I've had in ages.

And I'm not, I'm not really a chip fan. I'm not really a massive chip fan. I love fish fingers.

I would prefer to have mashed potato, fish fingers and beans. But you know, where do I get potatoes from? That's one of those things. So, but I will, I'm going to tomorrow, get some potatoes and start cooking every day and get some sandwich stuff for like lunchtime.

Maybe some salad. I have to start doing that because I've been my, I've been eating such nothing really. I've not been enjoying any of the food.

And I want to, I love it. You know, see a cheese sandwich, I don't really enjoy. But if you start adding tomato and cucumber, it's lovely.

It's fresh. It's juicy. Just like my nipples.

And it's nice, you know? And that's, that's what I need to get back to that. I've queuing. I can't get anything delivered.

So I have to queue. I have to go to the place. I can only carry a certain amount back because, you know, getting the bus, then it's getting the bus, wearing a face mask and stuff like that.

But tomorrow, when I take him to the vets, I'm going to go to the supermarket and I'm not going to spend much, but I'm going to get the bits that I need. In fact, I might actually even go into town and try and get a delivery from town. Cause there was a shop that would deliver from town, you know, deliver to you, but you can't order anything online.

So I might do that. But in the meantime, I'm going to have to speak to my friend because I just realized that she lent me £120 to pay for the vets, but I need to pay it back tomorrow, which is not going to leave me enough money to get through to the next time I get paid. So it's like, oh, it's just really a bit weird.

I need to get some food. Food has to be a priority, doesn't it? Really. So I'm going to see if I can figure out some kind of payment plan with her.

I don't know how that's going to go. Yeah, I'll figure something out. But I need to spend at least £50 probably tomorrow on food.

I've got enough toilet roll, thanks to my friends online that have helped me out. I've got a wishlist. I've got enough toilet roll for a while.

I've got my wishlist, which is online, which is just, it's on my Amazon wishlist on my website. It's basically just bits and bobs that are needed. It's like an ongoing thing.

You always need new toilet roll eventually. You always need soap and those kinds of things are always required. And so perhaps I should try and put potatoes on there.

Yeah, so that's my plan. I've decided so I need to make that phone call, see if there's something that can be done. Or I can perhaps pay her back over three weeks or I don't know.

What's three times £120? £40.80. That's £40 isn't it? £40 a week over three weeks. So maybe, maybe she'll allow me to pay £40 this week, £40 next week and £40 a week after. I don't know.

I'll see what she says. I'll see what she says. But yeah, it's this, I suppose my only thing is, well, I think the vets are a little bit like the opticians.

I've never ever been into an optician's where they haven't ended up wanting money from me. Sort of as far as new lenses. If I've ever once gone into the opticians, had an eye test and them saying to me, no, your eyes are exactly the same as they were last time.

You don't need any new lenses and we don't need to sell you any new glasses. That's all fine. Thanks for coming.

See you in a couple of years. Love you. Never, ever.

Now every time, yeah, your prescriptions change, you need to get some new glasses. Yeah. They start rubbing their hands together in excitement.

Okay. Brilliant. So that's something I need to look at as well.

Cause my eyesight has, it seems to have diminished a little bit, which is okay, but I'm kind of thinking, Hmm, it's not really, is it? Yeah. It's handy to be able to see. I mean, literally this is what my eyesight's like without my glasses on.

If a bus is coming towards the bus stop. So I'm waiting at a bus stop. A bus is coming towards me.

Okay. I could see the bus. You know, my eyesight isn't that bad that I can't see the bus.

It's massive. I can see the bus, but I can't see the number of the bus, you know, whatever numbers, you know, if you catch it a 49 or a 69. And I have to ask somebody that's at the bus stop, can you tell me what number that is, please? So I know whether to put my hand down or not to stop it.

Because I don't, I can't see the number until it gets close enough. When it's close enough for me to actually read it, it's too late to stop it. So it's gone past.

So I, even though I don't need to wear my glasses generally to go out, you know, because not what, what is there to look at really because I can see close up. If someone's standing in front of me, it's fine. So I know I'm not a boxer, but if I was a boxer, I'd be able to box.

My eyesight wouldn't prevent me from doing that because I can see fine when it's like close up. But if we both had really, really long arms and we could only, you know, box from either side of the ring, then I would need glasses. But that would be really weird, wouldn't it? Start putting, what am I talking about? Oh dear, I do.

It's the end of August. Things should start to perky, perky, perky up. Yeah.

So that'd be good. And yeah, just keep going, keep going and keep making more recordings. Still trying to learn more and more about the podcast and things that perhaps I'm not doing that I could be doing to get seen or get noticed by Google because I'm doing all right.

I just, I could potentially be doing a lot better just by playing the game as it were, by doing the, to making my podcasts search engine optimisable. I think it's the word. So I'm looking into that every day.

I'm trying to learn a little bit more about what's needed and I'm getting there. And yeah, it's about improving, isn't it? Every day becoming a little bit better, a little bit more knowledgeable, knowledgeable, yeah, knowledgeable. Hmm.

So yeah, I don't know what that was about. Oh, considering it's summer, it's not been too noisy, has it, in the background? Been a few cars and Andre and stuff, but it's not, it's been okay considering, you know, it's now 20, 19 minutes to five. It's been fairly quiet.

Yeah. So I suppose I'm going to go. Oh yeah, the, I went to the bank with my cousin and the bank person just laughed.

Yeah. And I thought to myself, I wish he'd been in the audience when I was doing stand-up comedy, get used in. I needed at least one person to laugh.

Instead, when I was doing comedy, I used to just have people, people used to shout out, that's quite a good business idea, but I'm not sure you might need a bit more work. I was like, oh, okay. What are you talking about? Nobody knows.

I've been leaning on my elbow and my little, my little finger on my right hand has gone numb. So I've been, I must've been leaning on a nerve. How weird.

So a big special hello, not to everyone, but to Riri and to Molly. So Molly's in, oh my goodness. He's Australia.

It is Australia, isn't it? I was in New Zealand. Wow. I could get in trouble for saying, do you not know the difference between Australia and New Zealand? Yeah, I do.

Kind of. I've never been to either, but you know, there's a little part of me would like to live in New Zealand. And there's also a part of me would quite like to live in Canada because I think if you're going to move away, you need to move far away.

You know, there's nowhere far, farther. There's nowhere better. You know, moving to New Zealand would be, that's a long way away, but it's kind of, from what I gather, very similar, kind of a similar place to England in some ways.

So yeah, and Canada, I don't know, just, because it doesn't matter. As long as the place has got an internet connection and I could make my recordings, it doesn't matter where I am. I like the idea of doing something different, having a little adventure, but not, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, maybe. Australia seems a cool, cool place to go. I'd like to go to America.

I'd like to go to, I'd like to go back to Amsterdam. I like Amsterdam. I don't know where else.

I'd quite like to go on a cruise, you know, sort of like a world cruise, but somewhere, it needs to be quiet though. So wherever I go, whatever I do, I need to be able to make recordings for you. It's a nice little rhyme, isn't it? I need to be able to make my recordings, because it's not just the internet connection, because I don't, I don't record these live while I'm, I don't stream them live.

I record them, then I edit them, and then I post them online. But you know, my, if I was to be on a cruise traveling, it would give me something to talk about, a little bit different from what I talk about here. Well, a lot different, I guess.

Mind you, I might still be talking about when I was in a children's home, I used to like brushing people's hair. It's like, yeah, but you're on the ice, you're on the ice cap. You've got polar bears around you.

Can't you talk about them? Well, I used to, I used to work in a comedy club, you know. Yeah, no, you told us that, but you're now in the rainforest. Can't you talk about the rainforest? And can you talk about that? Well, can I talk about Andre? I've got a ferret.

Do you know I've got a ferret? Yeah, we know you've got a ferret. We know, it's all you talk about. You're on a safari park.

I talk about a ferret, I talk about the zebras, and the lions, and the rhinoceroses. I could go to, I could go to a zoo for that. Oh, the best thing, did I ever tell you this? One of the funniest things I ever saw, went to the zoo.

This is a long time, this is back in probably 2008, went to the zoo. And there was a lot of people, it was like an elephant that was being fed. And across the road from there, or across the way from there, there was the enclosure with the, and, you know, albatrosses, gynos, gynosaurus, gy, gynosaurus.

So gy, what, the ones with long necks, what are they called? And it's just gotten right out of my head. Long neck, okay, I'll just start saying, long neck animal. So let's have a look.

Okay, so giraffe. I know it began with G, G, G, G, G. And there's these two giraffes, and there's all these kids there. I guess it was a school outing or something.

And so I went over to sort of have a look. I sort of, you know, found a little space a bit further away from the school trip. And I'm still scared of teachers even now.

I couldn't believe what I saw. There was one of the giraffes, started to mount the other giraffe and, you know, do the, or date night, really, have date night. I couldn't stop laughing.

The teachers were laughing. All the adults were laughing. And the kids were a bit confused, I think.

And even the, you know, the workers in the zoo just couldn't. It was just hilarious. Because it was, it was wrong.

You know, it's kind of not what you'd want your kids to see, probably. I don't have kids, but it was so funny. Anyway, that's probably enough for me for today.

Thank you very much for being here and being part of all this wonderfulness. I love you very much. And I shall speak to you very, very, very, very soon.

So remember to be kind to yourself, because you do deserve to be happy. You really do. Do something nice for yourself every single day.

Lots of love. Bye.