#939 OUCH - Let me bore you to sleep (Jason Newland) (24th December 2022)

Hello and welcome to let me bore you to sleep. My name's Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And I've got... What are you doing? Vinnie's making himself heard. What? He doesn't like me making recordings for some reason. Why don't you... What do you want? What do you want? Oh no.

So hello, hope you're well. So Vinnie, as soon as I started this recording, Vinnie started barking because he doesn't like me making recordings. I don't know why.

It wasn't... I don't know. And this chair is very uncomfortable, but I would explain why. Lots of why's there.

So just let you know my website is jasonnewland.com. I need to do some work on that and get it up to how it should be. Basically, I think it was Monday, I actually recorded a let me bore you to sleep. And it was a really good one.

It was I don't like. Yeah, I mean, it was. It was very Christmassy, talking about previous Christmases and stuff like that.

It went on for about an hour and a half, maybe longer, maybe nearly two hours. And I turn around to end the recording. And only 15 minutes have been recorded.

Because the SD card, you know, the you know, the card where all the stuff is saved was full up. Absolutely full. Never happened before.

Normally I delete stuff before it gets too full. For some reason, I kind of misjudged it. I can't believe it.

Honestly, 15 minutes out of a nearly two hour recording. So I'm just sitting here talking to myself. Talking, stop barking, mate, please.

I'll give you another sweet. It's a distraction. If you're distracted, it doesn't matter.

Elephant could run through here and he wouldn't care if he had a treat to eat. Or if the elephant was made of cheese. Because he likes cheese for some reason, which is weird.

I wouldn't thought cheese would be a dog's natural prey. Now I got a helicopter going over. Brilliant.

So yeah, this is Monday, probably early evening. Six, seven, something like that. And I decide that's it.

I'm not I'm not making anything else that day. You know, that was it. I'll wait till tomorrow.

And well, it's never ending, isn't it? You just want more. More. I'm going to start calling you Oliver.

Okay, he's eating fruit pastels, which probably aren't the best thing, but hey, he likes them. So Monday, probably about 10.30. I'm sitting down comfortably. Vinnie's in his bed next to me.

We're just chilling out. I'm watching something on telly, I guess. I don't know what.

Pretty much time to go to bed. I'm often in bed by 10. But on this occasion, I'm still awake.

A knock at the well, he starts barking, then a knock at the door. So my friend downstairs says, oh, do you want to? His dog came upstairs, came running upstairs and wanted to play with Vinnie. Do they want to go in the garden? I thought, why not? A little bit late at night to be doing that.

Okay, fair enough. So what are you doing? Do you want to cuddle? Do you want to cuddle? Do you want cuddles? No, I want fruit pastels. Why would I want you to touch me? I want fruit pastels.

Give me a fruit. That's all he's thinking. Pastels, fruit pastels, more, more, more, more, another one, another one, another one, another one.

There's nothing else going in his mind. See, I don't really want you barking while I'm making recordings. Call me old fashioned, but it doesn't really go together with the potential kind of falling asleep part of it.

Some dog barking loudly. Come on then, come on. You want one? I might stick him in the bedroom for a little while while I do this because he is annoying me.

He dances and everything. He's like on two legs with both his hands, like begging. I realize just like every other dog, just all he wants is something to eat.

Not food. He wants a treat. Constantly.

It's all about your tummy, isn't it? Considering you're so tiny, where do you put it all? I say that, but then I clear up his poo so I know exactly where I put it all. I put it all on the grass, my neighbor's grass. Don't you squirt it out? It's lovely.

So I'll leave him like, I'll leave that in, but if he barks, I'll have to edit it out. And then when I'm editing it, he's listening to me editing it and he barks when he hears himself bark. I've got a really interesting story to tell everyone, Vinnie.

You're distracting me. I don't like distractions. I have routines.

I have certain routines. It's never enough, is it? Whatever I give you is never enough. Last one.

Make it last. Even when I gave it to him and he's in his mouth, he's still looking at the tube. In fact, he dropped it on the floor and then looked up at me for more.

Cheeky little bugger. So my routines, and I'm not talking about big routines, I have routines in the morning. I get up, I come in, I take my stomach tablet because I've got acid reflux.

One tablet a day. That's it. In the morning, about half an hour before I eat.

So it's no big deal, but it makes a huge difference to my experience, as it were, providing I don't eat. I can't eat cooked breakfasts. Occasionally I can, but I can't.

I can't do a fried breakfast or two days in a row without feeling it and having to have extra help to relieve the heartburn. Excuse me. Nice, nice.

And I also can't drink beer. I don't drink spirits anyway. So the only alcohol that I would drink is beer and I'm unable to drink it because it causes me heartburn.

I've only had you three weeks and I want you gone already. Come on then. You want one? Get up on my lap.

I'm going to do, I'm going to take him into the, I'm going to actually take him into the bedroom. Come on. If you want to leave, just put it on the bed and then you can stay in there for an hour.

Well, he's now in the bedroom. I chucked a couple of sweets on the floor and he's now in there. I closed that door and I closed this door.

He's barking. He's barking. I think he's getting worse because when I first got him, I put him in the bedroom for an hour while I was doing a recording.

Didn't make a sound. I think, I think then he didn't really care about being close to me. Now he just wants to be near me the whole time.

He follows me around. If I lay down, he lays down with me on the bed. If I sit down, he sits down next to me.

Or if I'm at the table, he makes sure that he's laying on my feet or sitting next to me. He has to be touching me. So he's not happy right now.

But you know what? He's got a big bed to sleep on. He can do some weight training. He can do some exercises, some sit-ups.

You know, he's got lots to do in there. So it's not like he's going to be bored. Although I don't have a television in there.

Nope. I make sure that no fun happens in my bedroom. Just sleeping.

No fun. It's not a place for fun. It's a place to sleep.

That's my rule. I don't want it to be that way, but that's just the way it is. Anyway, so I've got my routines.

You know, I get up in the morning, take my tablet, then my routine's now changed. So I take him for a walk. Then I come back.

I go to the toilet. Then I put my breakfast on. So I have a ready brick.

So I boil the kettle, put the milk in the microwave for three minutes and 10 seconds. Go into the bathroom, clean my teeth, clean my face, have some mouthwash, brush my hair, then come back in, get the breakfast ready, put coffee, whatever, and just bring it into the living room. And I sit down, turn the TV on, and I watch whatever, you know, breakfast news or whatever.

And I'll have my breakfast. And Vinnie will be sitting next to me, staring. It's like, are you going to give me something? I'm like, okay.

I don't even know. I mean, I don't think he really likes a ready brick. For those that don't know what ready brick is, it's like porridge.

I would say a quicker version, but it's not really that quicker because you can get fairly quick porridge. I know because I used to have it. I used to boil, I used to put porridge in water, not in milk rather, and then put it in the microwave for three minutes or whatever.

And whatever, whatever, whatever. And it would be ready. This is back in 2004, maybe first, yeah, the beginning of 2005.

I remember some people might think, why can't you remember dates like that? So I don't remember specific dates, like individual days necessarily. But because I've moved around so much over the years, I've had so many different rooms that I've lived in, and different towns even, that I can place roughly where I was and what I was doing at that particular time. And I've got 2004 mapped out in my brain, roughly what happened during 2004.

Anyway, this isn't about 2004. This is about my routine. So I've got these routines.

When it's time to go downstairs, if I'm going to go downstairs, and let's say in the garden, just to take him out so he can go for a wee, instead of taking him for a walk, I'll just put my shoes on, my normal slip-on shoes, not my Crocs that I wear as slippers upstairs. And up to that point, I had been wearing my boots throughout the whole of the icy, snowy period, which lasted for about a week. It was minus, more than a week maybe, it was minus below minus continuously for over a week here.

It was snowing, and then it just turned to ice, and you know, I wore these boots. I don't know if you can hear him in the background. I wore these boots, and it's been perfect.

I was so pleased. Things that I'm starting to feel, I guess, attached to him a bit. So the barking isn't as annoying as it was, unless I'm just getting used to it.

He doesn't bark a lot, he doesn't, but when he starts, he just doesn't, he seems to struggle to stop. And right now, it's just because he wants to be with me, so I can't really moan at him for that. Like, you know, he's feeling rejected probably.

Never mind, eh? He's going to have to get used to it, because he's going to be on his own for periods of time. I'm going to leave him on his own when I go out, you know, in the future. Not for, like, days on end, but for sometimes for a whole day, if I have to, for a few hours here and there.

You know, he's going to have to get used to it. But I guess because my lifestyle at the moment is generally here, he's used to me being here. Oh, I think it's a term rod for my own back, I think, it's a term, expression for this.

So we'll see, we'll see how it goes. Last night, he was very naughty, very naughty. He was barking, there was no one to bark at.

I think someone was coming into the building, but they were doing it really quietly, which is quite unusual, to be fair. But it was very quiet, as probably not to wake anyone up. But he heard, and he started going.

And I'd gone to bed about 10 o'clock, just about, yeah, quarter past 10 in the evening. And this was, I think, 10 to 2 in the morning. And he was on my bed the whole night.

Well, up till then, and he started, and it was like, it startled me, really startled me. And I went and looked outside, there was no one, no one outside, there was no one knocking on my door. So I just brought him back in, got on the bed, and he started barking again.

And I stopped him from getting off the bed, so I held him by the collar, just so he wouldn't get off the bed. It was like, come on. And he started growling, and he bit me.

Now, he didn't bite me, bite me, like, didn't draw blood or anything, but he really was quite vicious. So I told him off. And, you know, he jumped off the bed and went to the living room, to the front door again.

And then we realised there was no one there. He came back into the bedroom, and I said, no. He was about to get on the bed again.

I said, no, out, get out. He looked at me, like, no, get out. And he went into the living room, and I didn't hear anything from him until about 8 o'clock, when he woke me up.

Now, he got on the bed and was licking me and stuff, so, okay. But I have to try and teach him that he can't be doing that. It wasn't so much the barking, but the biting me bit.

That was just out of order. It really went quite vicious on me. It's like, no way, no way in the world am I going to put up with a dog biting me, even if it isn't hard.

And I'm trying to teach him, we play fight, and he bites gently. That's the whole point, he's a gentle. If he bites hard and he snaps at me, yeah, I'm not going to put up with that.

So, he's going to have to learn not to do that with me. Andre learned, so he'll learn. Andre refused to be rough with me.

After a while, because I say gentle, gentle, and after a while of, you know, teaching him that, he would never be rough with me, even when I wanted him to be rough. Not rough, rough, but even when I played with him, he'd always just go, like, gentle. Yeah, my friend downstairs would come up and Andre would be biting him, like, really hard, because that's how he enjoyed doing it.

And my friend had a, he had a ferret of his own, well, it's a polecat, and he was used to it, because his polecat used to bite hard, like, proper bite. So, Andre loved him, because he could be vicious with him, but he would never do it with me, after learning not to. So, then he will learn, he will learn not to do it, and he's, he's still a baby, so I'm just teaching him.

I don't want to have to put him into the bedroom, like, like this, though, but then I used to do that with Andre. I used to have to put him in the bedroom, if he was being particularly noisy, or being a bit naughty, sometimes, I just, like, especially with a hypnosis recording, I don't want rustling and, you know, just the general pitter patter and whatever, on a hypnosis recording is not so good. On, on this one, on a let me boy to sleep, I'm okay with him wandering around and eating his bone and just, you know, doing stuff.

A little bit of background sounds okay, I think. But not barking, there has to be a cut off on that. I, I don't find barking, a barking dog does not relax me.

And I don't think you'll find anywhere online, on a podcast or on YouTube videos, relaxed to the sound of a barking dog for 10 hours. It's that video does not exist. Because it's not a relaxing sound.

It might be a beautiful sound if you've, you know, you might like hearing dogs bark and playing and that. Yeah, it's lovely seeing dogs playing around and stuff. But that's like a happy bark, isn't it? It's a happy, when he's at the door, it's frantic, it's, it's so high pitched at times.

Like yesterday or the day before, my friend was the other side of the door. And he said, what are you doing to that dog? I said, No, it sounds like you're torturing it. Because the sound was so high.

I said, I don't know, I've never heard him do that before. It was, he was screeching with excitement. Because he absolutely loves my friend.

And he loves my friend's dog. He just he gets so excited when he sees him, or when he hears him if he's knocking on the door, absolutely frenzy with excitement. And I think because he doesn't see me, because he sees me all the time, any kind of excitement's gone that it's fizzled out.

I'm just part of furniture for him now, I guess. So but I did have that theory tested. And I was quite pleased.

And because I didn't know if I was if I went away for a while, if I was gone for a bit, would he even care? Or would he care if I came back? Would he be interested? And I got my answer on Tuesday. So here's what happened on Monday. You probably get from the title.

What happened anyway, so it's not really going to be a surprise. And the picture on the podcast, if you if you're watching, if you listen to this, it should be a picture of me in what looks almost like a dress. But it's not a dress.

It's a gown, where I was having my back x-rayed. I was having a CAT scan, or CT scan, whatever. And basically, it's open at the back, and then I wore one at the front as well.

So I wore two of them, so that my bum wasn't sticking out. Because that just isn't fair on anyone. It really isn't.

And so what happened is what happened. Monday night, as I said, my friend knocked on my door. Do you want to come down and let the dogs play in the garden? Yeah, okay, cool.

I just I put my hat on. That's all I do. I am clothed.

I'm not walking around naked, just with a hat on. That's not the way I roll. Okay, I'd like to but I've been banned.

So I've got my hat on. I walk down the stairs. Okay, let's go then.

And Vinnie's already downstairs with my friend and his dog. They're already in the garden. Vinnie runs out.

He doesn't care about me. He's gone. And they run into the garden.

Before I get into the garden, I say to my friend, is the gate closed? Because sometimes people leave the gate open. And he looked at it. Yes, it's closed.

So in that time, so he lets the dogs run downstairs. He's at the bottom of the stairs, and we're just talking to each other. As we're walking, I'm walking down the stairs, and probably there's 13 steps all together, they're all concrete.

And it's like a shared staircase, because there's 12 flats, no, six flats in this building, it's all connected to different buildings. But this building, six flats, and there's about 13 steps leading up to my floor. I'm walking down, I'll probably get down for three or four of the steps, and I slip.

That is banister either side. And I normally have my hands. So I must have had my hands on the banisters, but not holding on properly or clearly.

And all I have on is this top that I've got on now, which is like a little cardigan thing, t shirt and tracksuit bottoms. My hat, woody hat, and my very slippery, I didn't realize how slippery, croc, croc shoe things. So I slip.

And I land on my back on the on the concrete steps. And I bounce down about nine steps. And I think it's obvious I'm gonna tell you it hurt.

It's gonna hurt, isn't it obviously. But it really hurt. Now I've tripped and slipped and fell many times.

I am, I'm quite known, quite well known as being clumsy. And accident prone maybe. You know, I fell out a bath, broke my wrist.

I broke my rib in Thailand. I smashed my feet on the exercise bench in my in my room, my bedroom, broke two toes. I actually fell over the day before Monday on Sunday, I fell over taking Vinnie for a walk in the park in Yeah, in the fields.

But it was muddy. I didn't hurt myself at all. I've just I just landed and it was fine.

I kind of managed to sort of spread myself out and landed quite safely. And it just thick mud. So I was covered in mud, but it wasn't didn't no injury at all.

So it's weird to two falls in one or two slips in one, two days and two days. Well, I'm lying there at the bottom of the stairs. And my friend's saying you all right.

And I couldn't answer him. I'd kind of the wind knocked down me a bit. Not literally, as in like not being able to breathe, but in a shock wise, if you know, yeah, I think shock.

I was in shock. Because I knew I could feel I was in pain. I knew that I'd gone down very heavy.

So there's a whole thing about if I was lighter. Like if I, you know, a lighter frame, I would have gone down with less force. But then my idea is I've got more padding.

But more so gonna be hitting the ground at a much higher velocity because of my weight. So I'm not quite sure which would be a good thing to be lighter. Because if I was lighter, I would have probably might have really hurt myself a lot more than I did.

If that if I didn't have the cushion, like muscles, probably fat as well on my back. There's muscles there. There is.

It just looks like fat. And it looks and it feels like fat, but I know it's muscle. So I land and gravity of course, pull you know, so a mixture of being 16 stone, gravity, bang, and then bouncing nine times or eight times.

Instead of if I was like, eight stone, I just would have floated down slowly, probably calm, you know. So it's it was, I was in shock. He's asking me, Am I okay? Okay, well, I don't know yet.

I knew that I was in pain. But I didn't know really how much pain I was in. I was waiting for pain to start really.

Because I knew I wasn't okay. If that makes sense. I knew I wasn't like just going to get up and or just laugh about it.

Because it was I could feel how heavy I went down. I couldn't get up. I said to my friend, look, how Wait a second, just wait a second.

And I said, I'm, I'm hurt. I saw actually I'm hurt. I'm really hurt.

And I was like, I could feel it in my back, my lower, it was like middle, the middle down to lower back on the left side. That's where I felt is literally just above where I normally have the pain with the arthritis. It's not brilliant.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle being filled in. Brilliant. Let's add a bit more.

And I could almost feel now the difference between where the arthritis is and this. The arthritis is still uncomfortable, but this is way in a different league. So anyway, I go to the doctor, I get he gives me a hand up.

He's he's super strong. So it's not hard. I mean, I'm quite heavy and a bit of a dead weight laying there.

But he helps me up. I couldn't I couldn't get up. I tried to get up on my own.

I couldn't do it. It was just too painful. So I get up.

This isn't a sad story, by the way. I'm obviously I'm okay. So the end results.

All right, I'm doing this. And so it's not a negative story. It's just a factual thing.

So he gets me up. I don't go outside. I said, Look, I can't go outside.

Please help me back up the stairs. I need to sit down if I can. I don't know what to do.

I really even at that point didn't know if I needed an ambulance. I didn't know what kind of injury I had. I didn't know.

I just didn't know. There's no way for me knowing is there. But I'd also hurt two of my fingers were bleeding.

So I don't know how I managed to do that. And so there's blood on the steps, but it's just from my fingers, which is good because I didn't even realize my fingers were bleeding. It's like why is there blood on the steps? I didn't bash my head, which was really, really, really fortunate.

But I know I had my hat on so that would have cushioned some of the blow. But yeah, that was. Yeah, my head didn't even touch.

My friend said you almost fell down sitting up. You slid down the stairs bouncing while you were sitting up almost like doing almost like halfway through a sit up. And so I don't know.

It's just maybe the top half of my back was keeps my head up or something. I don't know. I'm not really sure.

But it is quite hard for when I'm laying on the back on the floor. It's quite hard for me to put my head on the floor. Because my back, my upper body is quite a lot higher off the floor than my head.

If that makes any kind of sense. I can do it, but I have to really push it down. So can I do it? Yeah, I can.

But I definitely need a pillow. So it doesn't really reach the floor very well. Which is a good thing in this situation.

Because with the force, I don't think a head, my head would have fared quite as well. I don't know. I mean, I've had I've had hits to the head before and it didn't seem to affect me really.

But although when I went to doctors when I was about seven, eight years old, something like that, and they said that maybe my hearing loss was caused through head trauma. So and I know I did have some head trauma when I was very little. So perhaps, you know, maybe I have had some problems because of it.

So anyway, so this is the situation. He helps me upstairs, my friend. And then I can't sit down in a settee.

I sit in just like a normal chair that I've got. I sit at the desk with and it hurts, stand up, it hurts. I managed to sit down in a sort of a position where it's still hurting but not as much.

And what happens next is the dogs have escaped. They've got out the back gate. Someone's left the back gate open, just as we'd like gone out there.

So both the dogs are running off on their own. One came, mine came back. But the other one didn't.

So I had to go back downstairs with my shoes, got put my shoes on, hobbled downstairs to try and get the other dog in with a treat and that. So that was weird, trying to get up and down the stairs again. It's weird, though, because I was so distracted by that, I didn't, I kind of almost forgot the pain for a bit.

And I was very, the stairs were wet and slippery, almost like oil was on there. I don't know what happened, but it was, we managed to get it all cleared up anyway. So no one else slipped.

So I'm sitting up here and I don't know what to do. Do I just leave it? Just carry on? Just ignore it and just, you know, do what I normally do and just, just ride it, ride the wave and wait for it to heal? But then what if there's internal damage that I don't know? I'm not going to know that. You know, I can't tell myself if there's, I can't tell if there's internal damage.

So after a bit of to and fro in for about half an hour, should I go to the, I wasn't going to call an ambulance. That's the one thing I was determined not to do. I think it was the day before the ambulance strike, the recent ambulance strike.

I'm not sure if the nurses were on strike that day. The nurses had been on strike and the ambulance service had been on strike at various times over the last week or so. So everything's a little bit in chaos with the hospital, all hospitals, I imagine, around the country.

And I didn't know what to do. And I thought, well, if I ignore it, and there is some internal damage, and then I need an ambulance, I'm going to be in trouble because I might have to wait hours and hours and hours for an ambulance. It might be too late, you know, if it's if I've got internal injury.

So I thought, I better go to the hospital, they go to the accident emergency, just to make sure I'm okay. It wasn't just that I also was in an incredible amount of pain, I felt like I broke something. So I phoned a taxi service, and they said, no, we haven't got any taxis.

So I need to get an ambulance, I need to get to the hospital. I had a phone, they said, no, we haven't got anything. Okay, so I found another one, they didn't answer, another one didn't answer.

Finally found one that came out and they were in 15 minutes. Brilliant. Bloke was brilliant, he even helped me in and out of the car.

Well, he took his time, he didn't drive off while I was trying to get in. I mean, and he was, you know, he's really nice. So he helped me to do that.

Got to the ambulance, it cost me £18. I gave him a £2 tip. That's not a lot, but it's still just a tip, you know, it's not really relevant to the story.

Why am I mentioning it? Again, why did I mention anything, really? I mean, lots of stuff I said hasn't been relevant to the story, I guess. My back's really hurting. This chair is not suited for my bad backs.

Anyway, anyway, way, way, way, I get to the hospital. The taxi ride is about 10 to 12, 10 to midnight. I get to the hospital about quarter past 12, 10 past 12, something like that.

It's a really quick route at that time of night. No traffic, went down the motorway, it was there really quickly. I book in to the reception, go in there and they said what's happened.

I said I've had a fall, hurt my back. What they did to start with is I had to fill a form in just like say who I was and everything. And they tested me because to make sure it wasn't a very serious spine injury to do.

So they basically touched my spine down my neck and made sure that it didn't hurt and then down my back. And if so, they said, well, you're, it's fine, we'll get to see you. But it wasn't an emergency, emergency.

So that was good. And they said, if you just wait, there's a, I think at the time, that's a three-hour wait. Well, no, is it a three-hour wait or a five-hour wait, something like that.

It's a five-hour wait. When I left, there was an announcement and they kept increasing it. When I left, it was a 14 and a half hour wait.

So when I actually came home, they were announcing 14 and a half hours. So for anyone walking in to see for an emergency, to see a doctor or whatever, they would have to be 14 and a half hours before they'd be seen, which is unheard of. I've never heard of anything like that.

And I used to live in London and London was always a long wait. You go to an accident emergency, I guess like ER in America, if it's still ER. In London, even in the 90s, early 90s, you've got a long wait.

You're potentially going to be there all day or all night if you go there at night. That's just standard. You're going to be there for at least, I don't know, six to eight hours, but 14 and a half hours, blimey.

So yeah, it was very strange. So I'm waiting, I'm sitting there until half three and then I get called out. I think my name gets called.

I go and see a nurse or she might've been a doctor. I don't know. I think it was a nurse or a doctor.

She took me into triage, like a room. The door was wide open so people could hear the conversation. So there was no privacy, which was a bit weird.

And she said, she was asking me questions about what happened and I just told her what I've told you. And except I told her the truth. No, no, I did tell her the same thing.

And she's so okay. And what she did, she took my, no, I'd already had my blood pressure taken. I'd had that done at the reception.

Yes, I'd had that done. And she, what did she do? No, I don't think she really did anything. She checked my neck again, looked into my eyes with a light.

And I had my temperature taken as well at some point with my, into my ear. And then she said, she went away, she came back and she said, I squirted this in your mouth. I thought, oh, romance.

And she said, and it was, I said, what is it? She said, it's a, it's pain relief. So I squirted, it was like in a syringe, but I squirted it in my mouth. No pill, nothing like that.

I was like, okay. And apparently it's really strong, really strong, pain relief. And she said, well, I think you need, I'm not saying for sure, cause you haven't seen a doctor yet, but I think you need, she probably wasn't a doctor then, was she? Anyway, she said, I think you're going to need an x-ray.

Cause she was asking where it hurt and everything. I said, okay. So she said, if you'd like to sit down and a doctor will come out and, and see you.

So I'll be honest. I'm not sure what time the doctor came out. It was, it was after 10.

So for three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So for at least seven hours, another seven hours, I was already had three hours, another seven hours of sitting in this chair and I had a bottle of water and I sipped it every now and then. And that was it.

I had no food. I was hungry. And I was about to walk out.

I had to talk myself out of walking out of there. My back was in a lot of pain, but my back would have been a lot of pain anyway. My lower back by sitting down for so long.

It happened when I've been on a plane. It's, it aggravates my lower back. Oh, it's so much pain.

But then other people were also, you know, ill and in pain and stuff. It didn't even seem very busy at night during the night. It didn't seem very busy, but they had very few staff on very, you know, it was pretty much the same faces all the way through.

And I was sitting with people that I was there with for like six, seven hours. Just they were there, you know, for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Well, eventually I was, I was having this conversation myself.

If you're not here by 11, I'm gone. If you're not here by 11, I'm gone. And I think it was about a quarter to 11.

The doctor comes out. Mr. Newland. I said, it's new land.

He said, no, it's Newland. Okay. And then I actually didn't believe that they'd forgotten about me, but they hadn't.

So that was good. There was a whole kind of argument about me. But then, yeah, but you've been here for, at this point, nearly 11 hours.

Why would you leave after being there for 11 hours? And then just go 11 hours. If you go, those 11 hours are wasted. And you won't know any more than you did before.

As I really wanted to go because I was hungry. I was starting to feel a little bit unwell because I was so hungry. I hadn't eaten since probably seven o'clock the previous evening.

So all I'd had was little bits of sips of water. I didn't want to go to the toilet in case they called my name out while I was in the toilet. And the doctor was so cool.

He was a lovely doctor. He called me and went to the room. He said, if you can take your top off so I can have a look.

And I said, well, can you close the door, please? He said, oh, OK. But I don't want people sitting outside watching me getting undressed. And so he closed the door.

I took my top off and he, I don't know how bruised it is, but it was already, my friend had looked, it was already starting to get bruised anyway. So he, he said, well, it looks like your spine's OK because your spine's not hurting. And, and I say it's hurting.

He said, but I don't know if it is fractured because you're not, it's not hurting you as much. I said, it is hurting. He said, well, when I press on it, it's not hurting.

And I said, but you're pressing too lightly. He said, no, I'm not. So we kind of had this like discussion about, well, if he presses harder, it'd hurt.

I can press on it and it hurts. You're pressing like, just not, it's not hard. He said, if it was fractured, you'd be in agony.

And I said, I'm in a lot of pain. I don't want to use the word agony because I don't really know what that means. You know, I don't, I don't want to use that word, but I'm in a heck of a lot of pain.

And he said, and then he said, oh, but then you did have the painkillers, didn't you? So maybe that's why you can't feel as much. I said, I can still feel it. He said, yeah, but it'd be a lot worse without the painkillers.

And I said, yeah, but the painkillers were hours ago. He said they were very strong. And he said, well, I want to get you an x-ray.

He said, I don't think it's fractured because you wouldn't be able to stand if it was fractured because it'd be too painful. Well, went to the, he gave me a, he gave me a CAT scan, a CT scan, is that a CAT scan? So I went, and basically what he said is, I'm going to sneak you in there and get you seen first. So you haven't got to wait.

And he took me all through the, like where all the back routes, instead of going through the hallways, he took me through all the bits, you know, where all the doctors are and the patients are. And I saw some things I can't unsee unfortunately, but, you know, it was pretty much, I was just following him. One doctor said, what are you doing in there? Get out.

Like, nope, I'm with him. And she's just like, oh, okay. So I just followed him.

And then at one point he sits me down where the paramedics, the ambulances congregate, where they're bringing the patients in. He sits me down on one of their chairs and says, wait here for a sec. And then he walks off and he leaves me there for about 10 minutes.

So I'm seeing all this paramedic activity and I'm just sitting there and no one's saying a thing to me. No one said, what are you doing there? I'm just sitting there. Maybe they assumed I'd just come in by ambulance.

And again, I was seeing things that I just don't want to see this stuff. Eventually the doctor came back and I said, I thought you'd forgotten about me. And he thought that was funny.

And then he just, he led me into the x-ray department. He said, I've spoken to them and, um, on the phone and they're going to see you straight away. So you haven't got to wait.

So I'm like, okay. Took me into the x-ray department and they, the bloke, came out straight away. He said, just, just sit there and they'll call you.

They did. Within about a minute they called me and they said, oh, you can't see yet. You need to get changed and undressed into this gown.

I said, okay. So I thought, well, that's me right at the end of the queue now, isn't it? I got, I got into the gown. I came out and I don't know, just really weird experience.

I got another patient to take pictures of me. Three pictures they took of me sort of dancing in, not dancing, but posing in the gown. I just, it just was a weird experience.

And, um, I sat down and I was called pretty quick. I was there for about five minutes and I was called this, uh, lady that was with her son, I guess it was her son or grandson, son. Uh, could have been a younger brother, I don't know.

And she was asking me, hey, are you going to get on then? I said, well, I don't know. I've got a, I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you've hurt your back. How are you going to, how are you going to get by? I said, well, she said, do you live with anyone? I said, no, I live on my own.

How are you going to get stuff done? I said, well, just the same as I always have done. I've got no help. I've got no one to help me.

So I just have to do it myself. Just, I hadn't really thought about that as I'm used to it. Used to being on my own all my whole life, really, as an adult.

So I'm used to having to do things on my own. But it did make me think like, oh, okay, how am I going to do stuff? I can't get in and out of the bath. I can't get in and out of the shower.

It's going to be a, it's going to be a challenge getting up and down them stairs. It's, you know, it's, this is while I was sitting there thinking, oh, okay, I've got to take the dog for a walk. How am I going to do that? Anyway, I had the x-ray.

Now this was weird, right? Because have you ever had a CAT scan or is it CT? Is it CAT scan? CT scan, CAT scan. They basically put me through this, I don't know, like whole thing. This, they called it the donut.

And they were basically scanning my stomach, my whole abdominal region. So, which would cover the back. I guess they want to make sure my abdomen was okay.

And my ribs and, you know, the whole area. And, but it didn't go inside a machine. There was, it was just in and out through this thing.

And there's two ladies there. There was a man, when I actually finished, there was a man there as well. So, I don't know if he was hiding in one of their hats.

But he was, he just appeared out of nowhere. And I laid down. And they said, we'd first, we were saying that if you've got any allergies, I don't know that I know of, you should have had a blood test.

I said, well, I haven't. They should have given you a blood test when you first got there. Well, they didn't.

That's not really on me, is it? She said, Oh, I said, well, we need to know whether or not you're, it's safe to do this because we have to put stuff and it goes through your kidneys and make sure that you're okay with that. I said, but they decided to go ahead anyway. And basically, they pumped, they put this ink into me, injected ink into me that goes through my blood system.

And that's how they managed to map the scan. And she said, Oh, you're going to feel warmth in your head and your body, whatever. And she wasn't wrong.

It was a very strange feeling. But because you'd already told me beforehand, it was fine. If I didn't know it was going to happen, it would have scared the heck out of me.

I'm not being, I'm not even joking. It would absolutely terrify me because if I didn't know, and suddenly I'm having these weird feelings, but because she was so open, this is how you're going to feel, only lasts for a few seconds, and then it's done. Like 20 seconds, and then it's done.

I said, All right, cool. It happened exactly how she said. And she's doing that all day, every day, pretty much, I guess.

That's her job, isn't it? So she knows what she's doing. And she said, Are you okay with needles and an injection? I said, I don't care about needles or injections. Nothing you do is really going to even come close to what's been done already when I fell down the stairs.

And sitting in that chair for all them hours is, is way worse than any needles, any amount of needles you can put into me. And she did, I didn't really feel it. I feel a little bit, that was it.

And it was done quite quick. I couldn't get up, I had to, she had to help me to get up, because I couldn't move. Once I was laying down, I literally couldn't, couldn't move, because there was so much pain.

She helped me up. And then I went and got dressed. I left, went downstairs.

And I just waited and my doctor came out. And he called me in and he said, I'm just waiting for the results. They haven't got back to me yet.

The x-ray paper, I said, Okay, he said, just wait outside, it'd be fine. It shouldn't be too long. So I just waited in the waiting room.

Probably about 15-20 minutes later, he came out again, called me and he said, your back's fractured. You've got multiple fractures in your back, in your vertebrae, not in your spine, but in your vertebrae. Quite a few fractures.

And he said, you really shouldn't be standing up. He said, you're going to need to see an orthopaedic surgeon. And I said, stop right there.

I'm not having surgery. I'm not staying any longer. Really.

Now I know what you've done. Now I know what it is. I need to go home.

I can't stay here anymore. I'm at my limit. I'll wait to see them.

But he said, it's not about surgery. It's just about, they'll let you know if anything needs doing. They'll just give you some advice and tell you know what to do next.

And he said, there's a point that's coming through all this and they're not seeing them or not going through that process. I said, okay, fair enough. But I do need to leave because I haven't eaten and I'm not feeling well.

And he said, I understand. I said, so I tell him I'm grateful. I wasn't being rude to him.

I'm grateful, but I'm at my limit, but my limit now where I need to get out. And I'm happy to come back, make an appointment with the orthopaedic people and come back and see them after Christmas or something, or even later this week. But right now I need to get out.

But he said, well, wait and I'll speak to them and see if they need to see you or not. And then about 15, 20 minutes later, he comes out and says, he calls me in again. He says, no, it's fine.

They don't need to see you. All they're saying is just rest it and it will just heal naturally. Just be careful.

Just be careful. Don't obviously don't do stuff to put any pressure on your back and it will just heal naturally because it's not your spine. It should be absolutely fine with time.

And that was it. So I had a little bit of a cuddle and then I left. We didn't cuddle, not really.

I did say to him, do I get a badge? He said, what? A badge? I said, do I get a badge to wear? He said, with what on? I said, I'm a big boy. I'm a big brave boy. And he just laughed and said, no, go away.

So I did. So I left and there's a lot more to that story, but I've missed out fairly quite a bit of it. But this is the main bit about me.

Anyway, there was other stuff going on in the hospital during that period, as I'm sure you can imagine, other people doing things. There was some bloke having a go at people. There was an argument between a nurse and a lady that was going to sleep on the floor.

There was some, someone was arrested and there was all kinds of weird things happen. But, you know, I left out that stuff. Maybe I'll talk about it another time.

So this was Monday night. I got home. By the time I got home, it was about three, half three to half three in the afternoon.

Three buses to get back. And I knocked at my friend's door because he looked after Vinnie all night. I said, just leave him there, he'll be fine.

I'll only be gone for a few hours. Little did I know. And he said, no, I'll look after him.

So he did. Looked after him all night. And most of the day, to be fair.

Vinnie went absolutely crazy when I came in. He was all over me, so excited to see me, licking me, like really jumped up at me and he was cuddling me. And it felt quite nice that he actually remembered me, you know.

But apparently he was all night and he kept looking at the door, kept like listening out, thinking I was coming home. So my friend said he was really just wanted you to come back. He was waiting for me.

And although that's needy, it's kind of nice. I suppose that he's now feels, Vinnie feels that I'm sort of part of his life. I suppose in some ways I am his life, you know, I'm probably the most important person to him.

Maybe, I don't know. Although I still think that he's the last mum, the last place he lived. He'd be so happy to go back there.

But then would he miss me? I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know.

We're not going to find out because he's not going anywhere. He's staying there. I've invested too much in him.

I've almost practically nearly broken my back because of him, taking him into the garden. I can't blame anyone for that. It's just an accident.

It could have happened to anybody, anybody at all, walking down those stairs at that time. You take your eye off the ball, you know. That's the problem if you've got people around.

I'm quite concentrated, so I like to look where I'm walking. But it's hard to do that when someone's talking to you, when someone is distracting you. But that's what people do, human beings.

You know, it's a distraction and it's normal. You know, it's normal for someone to be talking to you when you're doing stuff. And for me, I work better when there's no one around, when it's just me and I can focus on what I'm doing and be organized and have a routine.

It's very boring though, isn't it? A little bit, a little bit boring. So I've been taking painkillers every day. So now I've had, Tuesday, oh man, I went to sleep.

I was still wired when I got back, still like, I was tired but I wasn't tired. But I managed to get a couple of hours and then I slept. I had an early night.

Wednesday, I slept in the evening and just got back to normal. So it's back to normal how it was. I was so tired, so tired.

I went to McDonald's on a Tuesday afternoon. Even though I'm a vegetarian, I just had to eat, had to eat something. I did have a sausage roll in hospital, but it wasn't very nice.

And I didn't realize that I'd left some of it in the bag and I was talking to my friend, Andre was, not Andre, Vinnie was eating something, like what's that? He was eating the sausage roll. He just helps himself. I've got, I want to do something about that because he's just, he, I don't know, he just does whatever he wants and I kind of like that, but at the same time, it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna be problematic maybe in the future.

Especially if I've just cooked a meal, someone knocks at the door, I go to the, you know, I come back and the meal's gone or he's eating off of the plate. We're gonna fall out over something like that. So, yeah, I gotta be, I gotta start putting some rules in, but I don't like being bossy and I don't like telling him off.

I mean, last night when he was biting or going to bite me, yeah, that's unacceptable, I can't have that. But I don't want to be a moany, a moany daddy. I want to be a lovely, loving daddy.

And I'm quite good, you know, with a chocolate. He doesn't eat chocolate, as simple as that. He doesn't have chocolate.

And I try and give him just treats of his own, dog treats. He has a little, a few little bits of mine. I don't give him bread, but he has, he has a few little bits of stuff, very few, but mainly, he likes yogurt, but it's only like the yogurt pot with a bit of yogurt in it, but I've already eaten the yogurt.

He likes the pot. And other than that, that's about it. So, that's the story of my back, of my back.

And I've been walking Vinnie every day, about three times a day. I can't go into the field anymore because it's all muddy and slippery. With the best will in the world, even with my boots on, and with a back that's fine, I'm probably going to slip a bit.

I can get my, I get my bearings and I can balance quite well, but with my back like this, no, any little jolt is just, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. So, that's it for me. Another thing which is weird, because you're probably thinking, it's all right, it's nice to hear, you know, you're telling us this story and it's a different story to how you, to anything you've kind of said before, which is true.

You've never heard this story before, have you? And you're probably thinking, okay, so it's interesting, it's a little bit different from normal, you know, but what about your stats? Tell us about your stats for your podcasts. Well, it, basically, the last few days, was it Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, on Wednesday, the stats went up. Now, I haven't made a recording since Monday, and Wednesday, they just rose.

So, I haven't made anything for a couple of days and they rose, and the next day, not as high, but still, much higher than normal, without making any recordings, without making any new recordings. And the next day, higher than normal, without making any new recordings, and today, so far, much higher than normal, without making any recordings. So it's really weird, it's like 4.30 in the afternoon, I've got not far off 8,000 downloads and it goes on to a 1 in the morning, my stats, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, so it's 6.5 hours left.

So, I don't know, just thank you if you are listening to this podcast, thank you, thank you very much.

And the other thing I've been doing is I've been uploading videos onto my YouTube channel, so I've been uploading, I've been making them over the last week, and that's one thing I've been able to do because I sit down for a little while, then I can get up and make the video, then upload it, and I haven't really, haven't really felt in the mood to make any podcast episodes, if I'm honest, I just haven't felt in the mood, I've been wanting to do it but I just haven't, I think understandably maybe, I don't know, but

yeah, I just, I'm feeling a bit better today, it's Christmas Eve man, it's Christmas Eve today, Christmas Eve, so I'm gonna, I'm really gonna make an effort to make one tomorrow, Christmas Day, I won't be going live, no, no, because it means I have to wash my hair, so I'm not gonna go live, so it's a, yeah the YouTube videos, it's going okay, there's, I've got 802 subscribers, you know, it's not a lot I know, but it's growing, growing bit by bit, I'm getting on average like one new subscriber a day, and I know it's

not a lot, you know, I'm not gonna pretend that it's amazing, but it's a gradual process, I've been uploading one or two videos every day, one at four in the morning and one at four in the afternoon, and I've now got 107 videos, and there's quite a few actually scheduled to be up, they've been uploaded, but they're scheduled to be released, and the latest one is released on the 23rd January 2023, so I've got at least one a day being released in January, all the way up to the 22nd of January, and then I'm gonna

be doing more to fill in that gap, so that there's two every day in January, so it's quite good, it's quite cool, it just takes a fair bit of work to do it, but I'll be ahead, and then any new stuff I do, I can then add for the future, so I can, let's say if I've got the whole of January full up before the end of the year, which I will have, anything I do new at the beginning of January, I can then make into videos and put them, upload them and schedule them for

February, if that makes sense, so I'll always be a little bit ahead.

Anyway, I'm gonna go, so have a brilliant Christmas Eve, and I will speak to you tomorrow, I'm gonna do a podcast tomorrow, on Christmas Day, if I don't, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna, my intention is to do that, and so have a great Christmas Eve, lots of love, I hope that you're happy and you're enjoying your time, whether it's with your family or if it's, if you're on your own like me, just hope everything's good, and I shall speak to you tomorrow.

Lots of love. Bye, bye, bye.