(no music) #1069 - The carpet is propper smelly - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (28th January 2024)

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland. My website is jasonnewland.com and please only listen when you can.

So, let me think, yeah, it's alright, everything's groovy innit, yeah, groovy, yeah, yeah everything's fine. Just doing my thing. Today, today, today, today, I did, I did the first of my addiction, well it's help with addiction podcast.

I won't go too much into it because as you're probably aware with these podcasts, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, I like to keep it light if at all possible. But yeah, I just, because of what's gone on recently, over the last recent times, well, over the last nine years really, but it's kind of all come to a head over the last couple of months and I just, well, I think he's making some weird noises, I'll check he's alright.

Yeah, I just checked up on him, he was on the bed, he was like all those here and I wasn't sure what was going on.

I think he might have been asleep, but when I came, when I got into the bedroom, he was awake. I gave him the cuddles and he's just followed me in here. Yeah, there's probably time to take him out for a bit, but I'll do this first and then I'll take him.

So, yesterday, I did quite a weird recording because just as I started, I had a phone call and then we decided to just talk to each other on a podcast. So, that's what the podcast was yesterday and I was just about to tell you all about my bathroom flood. I don't know how far I got into the interesting story, but it took ages to clean up.

You know, I think it was about at least 10 mop bucket fulls of water, at least 10, maybe more, filled nearly a whole bath and, well, about three quarts of a bath, maybe half a bath. It's quite a lot, quite a lot anyway. Okay, one egg cup full, but still, it's quite a bit.

And the whole time I was mopping up, I needed the toilet, but I couldn't get to the toilet without pretty much getting wet socks. That would have been a way to dry everything up, wouldn't it? If I'd had some clothes that I didn't need, some old clothes, rags, I could have dried that up, just chucked 20 towels or t-shirts on the floor. That would have dried it up almost instantly, but I didn't.

Also, another thing I probably would have done in the past, I would have just got toilet roll and just chucked as many, not whole toilet roll, but like taking off the roll and then spreading that over and that would soak it up. But I'd probably have to use about four, five, six, seven toilet rolls. But I can't do that anymore because I haven't got enough.

So what I did do was I got some old bank statements and decided to use those to help soak the water up and so I ended up doing that. It didn't really seem to help. I thought it would, but it didn't really, not really, yeah, it didn't really seem to do the job.

I think I'd have been much better off if I'd had one of those sponge mops, you know, the ones that you can just squeeze together and then it just gets rid of it, the water, instead of like an old fashioned mop, but it got the job done eventually. It just seemed like it was going to be forever and the water didn't seem to be going down, even though I was emptying bucket after bucket after bucket of water into the bath.

Now, you might think, why was I putting it into the bath? Surely I should have put it into the toilet.

Well, first of all, the water wasn't, well, to me the water didn't look dirty, it was clear and it didn't look like sewage water or anything. Secondly, I couldn't get to the toilet, because otherwise I would have got to the toilet. Yeah, it makes sense.

Eventually got it done, then the whole carpet outside the kitchen and the bathroom was soaking wet, so I put down lots of paper, hoping to soak that up and now it stinks and it's not dried either. I turned the heating on full to try and get a bit of heating in, I've opened the windows to air it out. It really was completely drenched.

It was a flood, basically. It's a very mini, mini flood and just in one room. Luckily, I mean, if that had been in a room with the carpet, in all reality, I probably would have had to chuck the carpet out.

It would have ruined everything, but it's just a little bit of carpet and I'm hoping that I'm able to get it dried out and move on with my life, unscathed, but time will tell. Outside of that, yes, so I did, I've been thinking about doing that podcast I mentioned earlier on, probably since the end of, I don't know, the last few weeks anyway, at least, but I wasn't quite sure how to approach it, how to even start the thing and today I thought, ah, hmm, I know what I'll do.

I'll start the podcast, I'll just do it anyway, because there's only one way of starting it and that's just by doing it.

And I figured I'll just do an introduction, I'll just talk a little bit about my experiences with things and where I'm coming from regarding the subject and I was probably a little bit too honest, to be fair, but hey, never mind. And that's it.

So I did about 50 minutes of talking about kind of what I'm planning to try and do and I talked about relaxation, I talked about when we're lying down in bed and there's certain feelings, well, I personally experience when it comes to peace of mind, when it comes to letting go, like naturally, just where your body and your mind calm down and there's a certain, I guess you could use the word bliss, there's a certain sense of well-being that to me is not only more real, well, literally is realer than some synthetic high, but it's also free and but it also, for me, it feels better.

Is, you know, there's no side effects other than the more you relax, the easier you find it to relax. The more you, the more time you spend in that zone of calm or peace, the easier it is and to me, it feels almost like a bit of a healing process. There's certain things in my life that feel quite healing.

For example, when I'm lying down on the bed and I'm facing the wall and Vinnie is leaning up against my back, he leans up right against a part of my back that, not my lower back, but it's upper back where I've got an ongoing bit of a grumble from a ripped muscle from, blimey, nearly 30 years ago and he leans right against it and it just feels better.

It's almost as if he's sending healing energy from his body, from the warmth of his body into my body and yeah, that's just how I feel sometimes. Sometimes when I'm stroking him or he's like resting on me and it's almost this and I realise it's probably just my mind but it feels, feels kind of healing.

It's being transferred from him to me. It's a very, very much a sense of peace and calm. When he's asleep, he's asleep, you know, he's just so chilled out and it's a nice feeling.

So yeah, I put something on the podcast episode, I wrote wrote down something and normally I don't really go for this philosophy, normally, but on this occasion I am. So I put down, this is the first recording, so it's number one, intro, help with addiction. This is the first recording on a new podcast series.

I hope to be able to help some people to move away from addiction towards freedom. If this recording helps one person, I've done my job. Now I know it's an old cliche and I don't generally go by that because, you know, I want to try and help as many people as I can.

But in this situation, if I can help one person because if I'm able to help a person to help themselves from addiction to freedom, then I mean technically I'm helping a lot of people. I'm helping their family, I'm helping their loved ones, I'm helping their friends, I'm helping maybe their work colleagues. There's lots of different people I'm helping, you know, as a side effect.

I'm helping their neighbours possibly because, you know, with the chaos that sometimes would surround the addictive lifestyle can, you know, affects a lot of people. People that aren't involved in it can be affected in really big ways. I know from experience.

So I once lived in a house. I once lived in a house in New Orleans. They call it the Jason's house.

I lived in this house. It was around the corner from a football stadium. Not relevant to the story but just wanted to let you know.

Alan Jordan once played there at the football stadium, did a concert and it was during the summer and I had the windows open because it was hot and I was trying to watch EastEnders on telly. I couldn't hear it because he was so loud. Even with the windows closed it was too loud.

Couldn't hear the television. All I could hear was Crocodile Rock, yeah. Candle in the wind.

It was like, I'm still standing. And the thing about Elton John, I mean this was back in 2004, so 20 odd years ago, it just sounded the same on stage as it did in his records. It's like almost, he's possibly one of the greatest live performers of all time.

Just phenomenal. But if I had wanted to listen to an Elton John album, I would have listened to an Elton John album. I would have put a CD on instead of watching EastEnders.

But no, I chose, I actually made the conscious decision to watch EastEnders at 7.30 or whatever time it was. But no, no, no, no, no. Elton John decided otherwise.

He decided to infringe, infringe on my evening. An evening that I had been, well not looking forward to, but it was still an evening, you know. I wonder what I was doing.

If it was in the summer, yeah, I was still, still working in the, in the gift shop. Yeah, the gift shop, man. And I started working in insurance, I think in September 2004.

Yeah. So I had an argument with Vinnie earlier. He just wouldn't stop barking.

Really wouldn't stop. And I was trying to make a recording and he would not stop. So in the end, I shouted at him really loud.

Because there was a dog outside in another, in the garden, like, probably about 10 doors up. It was barking. And he kept barking back.

So I shouted at him and the other dog stopped. Like all this activity that I could hear just stopped. And it was so loud, I could see stars.

Seriously, it was like, yeah. And I feel bad now. Because I don't shout.

I'm not really a shouter. But he was winding me up so much. Really pushing me to my limits.

So, yeah, that was it. Yeah. So I've done that.

I mean, I have done two recordings in the past back in about 2017 on addiction. But I didn't have the knowledge that I have now about it. As such as I know what it's like to live in a house with alcohol dependent people.

I've done that. I did that, as I said, in this house where John Lennon, not John Lennon, Elton John. Now, I would have turned these stenders off to listen to John Lennon.

And so there's one, two, three, four alcoholics living there. And me, I was two total at the time, took a whole year off of doing anything, 2004. And then right at the bottom of the house, there was a another bit of word for it, cracked in basically, which got closed down by the police.

So that's what was going on in that house. One of the blokes ended up with liver failure, went to hospital. He survived.

I can't believe it because he did, which is good. And I got on apart from one person who didn't really speak to me. Everyone else I got on really well with.

And I could see the conflict because, or the the issues, because a bloke next to me, he he was great when he didn't drink. When he did drink, it was just everything went, went wrong. And he was friends with a bloke who lived downstairs.

He was friends with me as well, but he was like, they basically liked to drink together. But then when he stopped drinking, the one next to me, the one downstairs used to care for him, used to support him, used to look after him to try and help him. Yeah.

But then again, drinking again, because he didn't want to be around someone that wasn't drinking. It was just a very strange situation. But I think I needed that because I needed to see that, not that I didn't think that severe people with like those severe problems were not human, because I've never thought that really, but it was good to see the human side to it, as opposed to what I would normally see is sort of in the street, very drunk people being angry and all that stuff, you know, all the negative parts of it.

I saw that they were really nice people that happened to have issues surrounding alcoholic beverages. And it's so weird how everyone ended up living there. With the same issues.

And it wasn't council, it wasn't a charity. It was just a private house. The landlord rented rooms out.

And you didn't have to be alcohol dependent to move in. It was just anyone that applied. You know, if you had your deposit, you could move in.

And it's just really weird the way it worked out. And that was my what? That was my sober year. I decided not to drink at all for a whole year.

What a challenge. What a challenge. Seriously.

It's like, why? Why is this happening? You know, I just I didn't didn't even have I went to the pub with one of them. I just had an orange juice or a Coke. And it's slightly tempted.

But by that time, I'd pretty much not had any alcohol for about four or five months, six months or something. So it didn't really matter then. It's a weird year that was 2004.

I did Wing Chun Kung Fu. I think three times a week. I think it was Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Tuesday and Thursday was the standard Wing Chun. We also did some Jeet Kune Do as well. With Master Wong, his name was.

And on Friday, it was leg spa. So it was just using legs, nothing else. Using legs to defend yourself and to attack and no hand, nothing.

You couldn't even block, you had to block with your feet and your legs. So I wouldn't even want to attempt to do that now. But back then I was able to do it.

And I got down to 11 and a half stone in 2004. So I put weight on in 2001 or 2000. Yeah, 2000.

I put weight on in 2000. And then yeah, I managed once I started doing exercise, I stopped drinking. I was a vegetarian for most of that year.

I lost weight. I was physically active, I had a quite physically active job at times. And I was, you know, working out.

So I got down to 11 and a half stone and I was really slim, like proper slim. I'm now 16 stone. So I put, what's that, five and a half stone on since then in the last 20 years.

What's weird is I remember when I reached 14 stone, I thought I was gonna pop. I really thought that like, and this was during university about 2009, 2008, 2009. I really thought because I just like felt so heavy and so big.

In fact, I felt bigger then when I was two stone lighter than I do now. I'm two stone heavier, obviously. And I don't know why.

It's like I've, I've grown into my body, maybe. Who knows? One thing I do know is I think it would be practically impossible for me to get down to 11 and a half stone, even if I lost, even if I got down to 1% fat. I still couldn't get down to 11 and a half stone because I put too much muscle on over the years.

That might sound like a brag and a complete lie. And it's not a brag. It is a lie, but it's not a brag.

Okay. No, it's, I have, I put, I've just got more muscle than I used to have. Got more fat as well.

So I'm pretty sure if I, I don't, I even if I got rid of like 99%, it's not 99% is it, but if I had 1% fat, so I'm not 100% fat am I? So I don't know what percentage I am, probably 75%. I don't know. If I got rid of, if I got down to like 1% fat or 2% fat, whatever the ideal super fit is, I'm still going to be walking around at 13 stone, at least maybe 14 stone.

Cause you think about imagine two stone of fat is a huge amount of weight. I can't imagine I've got two stone of fat on me. I mean, once you take the belly off, that's not going to weigh two, it's not going to weigh two stone.

It's not going to weigh a stone. I don't think, maybe it will. Mind you, probably each of my buttocks probably weigh about a stone.

It's about a hundred kilos each in my bums, my bums. We do have two bums, don't we? Kind of. And I guess I'm never going to know really because chances of me getting down to 1% fat is, I guess quite unlikely.

Although I am starting to think about maybe looking into getting a bit more exercise. I'm thinking about it, but I'm also thinking about becoming an astronaut. You know, I'm thinking about tap dancing, lessons and you know, there's lots of things I'm thinking about.

I'm going to become a trumpeter. I'm going to try and join the sea, sea cadets again. You know, there's lots of things that I thought about.

You can't go back though, can you really? Can't go back. Isn't it weird that if I went back to the karate club that I went to when I was a kid, they wouldn't remember me. Still the same man running it.

I nearly said hosting. Still the same man hosting. Still the same instructor, Paul, still there.

I mean, he's got to be, I don't know. I can't even guess how old he is. And now I'm a bit too scared to say anything.

I won't say nothing derogatory about him. He's, I loved him. He was brilliant.

He was a great bloke. That's one of my regrets though. I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

No, so many. When I left school, I used to, and I went and worked in a chip shop. I mean, that is among the most stupid things I ever did.

But hey, there you go. This is just, I didn't know any better. I didn't get any kind of advice from any adults.

And let's face it. My boss wasn't going to try and advise me to get a better job, was he? Because I was working for him. You know, he's, I think, although I was annoying, I was quite a hard worker.

So you know what? You're not going to put me off and say, go and, go and get a job on the docks. You'll get paid three times, four times as much as you're getting paid here. And it's clean work.

It's not going to be walking around. When you go into the supermarket or into a pub after work, people aren't going to be looking around. Where's that fishy smell coming from? Because that's what happens.

That was, you know, I go into the supermarket. Everyone's like, what was that? Even in the supermarket, even the fishmongers would be like, what the hell is that stink? It's like you work in a fish shop. You work with nobody.

God, that really stinks. Then we all realised it was me. It wasn't the fish.

I had these trainers. I think you might call them sneakers where you live, but they're basically trainers. They're like sports shoes.

They stunk really bad. Now, I guess you don't really need to add the word really bad to the word stunk. It is self-explanatory, isn't it? But in this case, you do need to add the words really bad.

Like, I can still smell it. I can still smell, oh, and I wear them every day and they get wet. And I wear them all day long and they were wet.

And I ended up with ingrown toenail, all kinds of festering things going on in my feet and my toes. But I didn't have the money to buy new trainers. What I should have done is wear Wellington boots for the first part of the job, when I was doing the chips and doing the fish and getting everything prepared.

And then when I was behind the counter serving and frying or whatever else I was doing, then I should have worn something different. Maybe some boots with a good grip so I wasn't slipping because that was it could be a slippery job at times. And it's not good to be slipping around those fryers.

And it's weird that I spent two years of my life doing that. And I don't, to be fair, when I left school, I wasn't really, I don't want to use the word capable, but that might be a valid word for this scenario. Maybe equipped, maybe prepared, ready for any job.

I didn't feel that I could, I didn't, what could I do? I left school with no qualifications. I didn't try at all at school. I just messed around.

I didn't do homework. I didn't, I just basically, I gave up on them and they gave up on me. So when I did actually leave school, I had, I didn't really have much to offer.

I didn't have any interests when it came to working. The only thing I was interested in was karate and martial arts, whatever. I just loved karate and girls, I guess, really, to be honest, just like any other, just, I was interested in romance.

So yeah, I was, I had that obsession with females, which, yeah, I'll admit I did, I did just wanted to have a girlfriend. Never, never did very well at school. Never really, never really, not really, you know, didn't really excel in the, didn't have much of a love interest at school.

There's a couple of girls I kind of dated and there was one girl that I really liked and I think I left school. When I left school, I saw her outside and she was still at school. She was a couple of years below me.

So she was still at school. But I really liked her. So she'd be, I'd be 16, she was 14.

Or maybe she was, I was 17 and she was 15. I don't know. But I really liked her a lot.

And I've known her since junior school. So I used to play with her during the playtime at junior school and there was a group of us used to play with each other. So the girls, because I was never really a boys boy, I was never really into boys stuff, whatever that is, you know, playing football and stuff like that.

That's kind of how it was back then. Just remember this is the late seventies. And so we used to play.

I think what it was is my friend, Dean, his sister, was, they were her friends. So we used to hang around with them. And I remember, vaguely remember leaving that school to go to high school.

And I was sad because I was leaving I was leaving them behind because I liked her. I just, I just liked her. I don't know what it was about her I liked.

I just liked her. I can't remember her name or anything, but she was just lovely. And used to just like spending time with her.

Again, you know, this was, I was, I say late, it was what, 79, 80. So you know, it's quite some time ago. And then I think when I was, when I'd left school, probably working at a chip shop at this point, I saw her and we were running around in the street, like little kids again.

Technically, you could say she was still a little kid, but, and I was really, I suppose, but not, we would like running around like we used to when we was like, when she was seven and I was nine. And it was so much fun. I remember when she joined high school a couple of years after I'd been there.

I was so excited to see her. Because I hadn't seen her at all that whole time. And she was like, oh, and I was, oh, and she still remembered me, still remembered me.

So we just, you know, used to see her sometimes, but didn't generally. I think at that point, I was no longer hanging around with girls. I had my friend.

I had a few friends, you know, blokes, boys, whatever. And I suppose I was too old, not too old, but I just didn't really sort of do that anymore. I didn't play football.

I wasn't like a boy's boy or anything. But I did. I did.

I'm trying to think what I did do. I just like walking around the edge of the playing field, singing to myself. I like being on my own.

I really enjoyed being on my own. It was my favourite thing. I quite like being on my own in a crowd or just away from the crowd.

So to be on the outskirts or to be at the back of a concert, or the back of a comedy club. So, you know, just away from everyone else, but maybe to still be able to enjoy some of the positive energy that may be radiating from that particular group, perhaps. I don't know really.

But I did wonder like, you know, as the years go past, why didn't I just tell her that I liked her? I know I was young and she was young and whatever, but I did like her. I remember this when I was in the, yeah, when I started working in the chip shop, I used to look forward to, the only thing I liked was just the girls coming in.

And some of them used to flirt with me so they could get extra, extra, what do they used to call them? Scraps.

They've got different names around the country. But they're basically the bits of batter that come off the fish, or the fried sausages, whatever. And it's and you get that and they call them scraps.

I think some places they call them scrapes, or whatever. So people know some or some some girls would flirt just to get a few extra chips. I liked it a lot.

It was good. I didn't have much luck. I didn't I didn't know how to, I didn't, I don't know how to talk to women.

Even now, I just, it's okay. If I'm not, if I'm not interested in someone, I can talk to them. If I don't feel romantically shy, then it's fine.

But I remember one of my friend's sisters used to come in and I really liked her. And she'd come in and I'm going to ask her out. And when she did come in, I'd be like, Oh, it's like what? And it was just embarrassing.

Really. She was lovely. So I don't know why I'm thinking about this.

So I'm thinking, I just wonder, I just, this is little thing I'm thinking, how would my life had been, how would it been if I had just started my working life differently? If I'd have actually got myself just a different job? I'm not saying a proper job, because working in a chip shop is a proper job. All jobs are proper jobs, aren't they? But getting a job that would potentially have some kind of promotional aspect to it, you know, that could lead to something more.

Because the only, there's only two ways really.

I suppose the only way I was ever going to make any money from working in a chip shop was if the person that owned it opened up loads of chip shops. So I'd first of all become the manager of that one, get paid okay money, and then maybe started managing, like an area manager, a bunch of you know, so if he went on to be hugely wealthy, then I might end up having some money, you know, getting paid well, to help run the business.

But that didn't, well, just saying that that could be one, one way it could have gone.

And another way would be that I opened up my own chip shop, which of course would take money. Now I had the experience of doing most of the jobs, because I did get taught well, but I did not have the savvy, is it savvy, the brains? I don't know. I did not have the common sense, or the skills to have my own business.

In that way, I would have needed someone to run the financial side of things. Otherwise, I probably would have spent all my money on ice cream and cakes. I had a friend, he worked in the butchers, actually, when we left school, and he said, I spent all my money on chocolate.

He was still living at home with his parents. And he was so pleased, like, I've got all this money, and I can, I can buy sweets and chocolate and toffee. He was 16, 17 years old, and it was so funny.

It's like, good for you. It's almost like his dreams come true. He can now eat endless amounts of sweets, confectionery.

And some year later, and he had no teeth. Brilliant. Now he was good.

I think he, I think he might have gone into estate agents. But see, I could have perhaps got a job. Because I'm thinking, what could I have done? Who could have I asked that I knew to give me a job? Who could I have like just someone that I knew in my life.

And the only person really, that I could have maybe asked for a job from would be my uncle that lived in Dover. And he had his own company and he's very successful. And I adored him.

He was an amazing person. He still is, I'm going to say, but I haven't seen him for decades and decades. And he's my favorite uncle.

See, he's moaning and whining again. Not my uncle, Vinnie. Vinnie is moaning and whining.

I don't mind it when he's, it's not that I want him to be quiet the whole time. It's not that. I just want him to be quiet for an hour, just for an hour.

An hour, that's all. Just for one hour. Just to keep a little bit quiet.

And even then, I don't mind if he's running around, he's eating a bone, he's crinkling stuff. Because generally people that listen to this, they know that they might hear him in the background. But when he starts whining like this, it's a distraction, a real distraction.

So, oh, so that would have been a possibility of going up to Dover and asking him. But I didn't even think about it at the time. For me, Dover was like another country.

I didn't have any money, didn't have a car or anything like that. I think at that point, on my own, the furthest I'd ever been away was about 16 miles on a train. So I'd never travelled on my own on a train before, to any length of distance or anything.

I was very sheltered. I travelled a lot around the country, but with adults, with people. I remember I once travelled from Newcastle to Southend with my social worker, Mr. White, was it Mr. White or Mr. Young? Mr. White.

Mr. Right, I think it was Mr. Right. And he was my social worker and he travelled up. I think it was just me, but it might not have been just me.

It's just I don't remember anyone else being with me, which is weird. Why would it just be me? Because my other two brothers were there, unless they travelled separately. Anyway, I just remember I had some crayons and some colouring in books and stuff like that.

Because it's a long journey, Newcastle to Southend. So we check out how long it takes. So Newcastle to Southend.

By train. Times. Let's have a look.

Let's have a look, shall we? Newcastle. Oh, shut up. Do you accept these cookies? It's constant now, isn't it? Like, yeah.

I've never seen no cookies yet, have you? Newcastle to Southend. Right, get cheaper. Let's have a look.

So it is, wow. It's not that long, actually. It still is for a kid, though.

So it's got, I would have gone during the day. It wouldn't have been early hours, I don't think. So it's 9.30 in the morning, you get there 2.30 in the afternoon.

It was a 10, 11, 12, 1, 2. So it's five hours. That's quite a long time for a five-year-old to be sitting on a train. That's a long time for an adult to be sitting on a train really, isn't it? Five hours.

And there's two changes as well. So let's have a look. Newcastle to London's King's Cross, and then take the tube from London's King's Cross to London Fenchurch Street, and then from London Fenchurch Street to Southend.

See, that's where it goes wrong, because you get into King's Cross at 12.39, but you don't leave London again until 1.34. So that's like over an hour of just being in London. So it's not five hours sitting on a train at all, is it? Blimey. I've never been so upset, so disappointed.

£63.30 one way. I bet you if I got a one-way ticket from here to Newcastle, it would be more than £63.30. I bet you. Should try it.

So remember, £63.30 one way. So let's have a look. Let's have a look.

Come on, right. Blimey, come on. Okay, so if I just click on change.

So, um, you know when I said that we don't mind Vinnie messing around on the floor, chewing stuff. It's been very noisy right now, isn't it? Very noisy. All right, here we go.

So I found one here. Okay. Isn't it weird, right? Okay, so this is, what did I, £63, wasn't it? So from here to Newcastle, £96.80. So let's try another one.

Okay, let's try another one. Southend to Newcastle. Ready? £88.

So please explain this to me. Please explain it to me. Please.

How can it be more money? In fact, it's even more than that if we go later. So that was 9.30 leaving. So leaving at 9.30, 9.30 in the morning.

£76.10. £76.10. Obviously everyone's £63. So okay, not a lot of difference. But how can one way, the exact same journey, tipped upside down, be a different price? It don't make sense to me.

Here's weird. That's standard first class £117.60. I think first class should come with some kind of electric key, which you have to have to get in, so that no one else, like a whole carriage, something like that. So you can only get in with your ticket.

The door doesn't open otherwise. So the general, really, can you make a little bit more noise please? So the general riffraff can't get in. You know, people like me.

I used to sit in first class in the 90s. I'd get on a train, there'd be no one hardly on the train. There'd be no one sitting on first class or in first class, which would just be a little section at the end of the train, at the end of the carriage.

So I'd go and sit in there. Then a train inspector, you know, a card ticket inspector would come in and say, tickets please. And I'd say, there you go.

This is first class, you know. Is it? Blimey. Sorry about that.

And I'd just get off and just move into another chair until the person moved on and I'd get back in. Now it doesn't work anymore. Now they want to, like, take your details and send a big fine.

And if you don't do that, you want to get the police involved and, you know, it's a major crime. I never understood that. I never understood that.

The train services are run privately. They run a private service. How can they set a price for a ticket? And if someone doesn't pay the ticket, then the most that they should be able to do is what they used to do in the old days is kick you off the train.

Not while it's still moving, but you have to get off at the next stop and go away. That's how things used to be. Now it's like they really suck.

Now it's going to be a high profile court case now. Oh, but this isn't a government thing. This is private.

This is, I've got onto your, it's, I don't know, it's almost like getting into a taxi. And then, like, just saying, and not having any money. Okay, that, I mean, that's kind of theft, isn't it? I suppose it's not like that at all, really.

Maybe it is like that. But you can't, if you can, if it's a public space, you can just walk on there. I don't know what my argument is there.

It's not really a very good argument. You know, I mean, I buy tickets. Saying that, I've got this job in 2001, Haroldwood.

And I got a bus pass, no train pass for a month. And I was getting on a Maryland station, which didn't have any barriers, you know, the barriers you have to put your card through to get through. No barriers.

So you just walk straight in. And I got off at Haroldwood station. Again, no barriers, you just walk, walk straight out.

And after a month of doing that, coming back and forward from between that, those two places, you know, five days a week for a month, I started to think, was there really any point spending 60 quid a month, or whatever it was on this? So what I did is I just didn't buy any more tickets. And besides, my ticket had not been checked once. So I had a month, you know, pass or whatever had been checked once the whole time.

And then one day, on a particularly busy morning, I was checked. And it was very humiliating. And I was trying to be aggressive, not aggressive, but like defensive, like I was in the right and but I wasn't.

It was just embarrassing. And basically, I'd spend the rest of the journey on the naughty step. Yeah, I didn't enjoy that.

Never got the fine, though. The fine never arrived. And it was probably 20 pound fine or something like that.

So it's quite a long time ago, isn't it? You know, it's about 100 years ago. Never got a fine. Really don't know what happened to that.

Maybe just got lost in the post or some thing. I don't know. That was an okay job.

I just remember this. There's some very just Yeah. There is some really weird situation.

There was this outside because this was during the summer. So we were outside the building during a break time. And I think we used to get I'm pretty sure we used to get sandwiches delivered.

Like a sandwich van would come. I got a vague memory of a sandwich van coming every lunchtime or every break time. Like once a day, I mean, in the morning.

And we could buy, you know, like sweets, Kit Kats, sandwiches or whatever. And so we're standing there. There's about me and three other men standing there.

And there's this bloke walking. So I'd only been there for a few days. So I was just I wasn't really with them.

I was just pretending to be with them. I was just there, you know, drinking my coffee or can of coke or whatever it was, probably can of coke to be fair. And this bloke was walking towards us.

And I didn't know that he worked there as well. But he was in a different department. And he was limping.

He had a physical is like hip was at an issue was hip. He was a young man. The other issue was hip.

And one of the blokes that was standing with me said something derogative. Is it the right word towards this bloke? He couldn't hear it, but he was the other side. But I'm not saying that his hearing was no good.

I'm saying he he was too far away to probably hear what was said. That's what I'm saying. I'm not prejudging his ability to hear at all.

I'm just you know, blimey. Stop judging me. Anyway.

So this this bloke said something common what it was, wasn't even funny. I don't think pretty close. It was rude.

And the bloke next to him said that's my brother. It was not Wow, I'm not been in similar situations like that. Well said something stupid.

And it's like, when I was younger, that is something that I shouldn't have said not not like that wasn't like that. I'm not never really been into making fun of people's disabilities. Not really.

I'm not. I'm kind of mentally challenged myself and I really so he nothing happened from it. Like nothing came of it.

But it was like, wow, he apologised or it turned out to the blog to stand with us the one that his brother who said that's my brother is kickboxing champion. Like, I couldn't turn a very not only that his brother, the one with the like the limp and a thing. He also did kickboxing.

And they used to like spar with each other during the lunch. And he basically he didn't let the the physical issue that he had stop him from training. I mean, he's gonna say, I was gonna say his aim wasn't always perfect, but I won't.

I'm just it. It was just nice to see reminded me of when I was at school, practicing karate with my friend that was going as well. And we just it was just fun.

It was a lot of fun. And there was this other bloke they started, I think he might have been he might start with me, or maybe the week after me or something. And he was so menacing.

He would literally talk to people on the phones, because this is for phone contracts. And it almost tell people what they were going to do. He didn't know he's doing it.

That's really deep voice. It's like, so we've got a contract. So what we need to do now is get your bank details.

And then I'll take them down. And we'll send that out to you. Okay, if you can go and do that now, and they would, they'd also cancel as well.

Afterwards, when they felt safe, when it's safely left the country or wherever. It's really like, he wasn't doing it on purpose. He wasn't like he just had that voice that was what the right word is scary, maybe intimidating.

Don't know. I don't know. That's one thing I don't have.

I don't have a scary voice. An annoying voice probably, but not scary. So he's now staring at me again.

So what we're going to do now is one is 927. So I need to take him out for a walk. They need to get something to eat.

And there'll be time for bed. So I'm probably not gonna upload this or get it released until tomorrow early hours tomorrow. So yeah, it's otherwise I won't be going to bed till about half 1112 or something.

So it's good takes a while to get all processed. So I'm gonna go. Thank you very much for listening.

Again, I've spoken for over an hour and I've said absolutely nout and said a single thing have I? Isn't that amazing? Okay, so what did he talk about for an hour? Nothing. Literally nothing. Even I can say that.

Honestly, I don't know what I spoke about. There was nothing. It was just a bunch of stuff.

Meaningless. I need to take the little girl out. So I should speak to you tomorrow.

So remember to be kind to yourself. You deserve to be happy. And just hold on to that idea.

Hold on to the idea that this year is going to be a much better year than last year. Things are going to change in the positive. And why not? Why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't things improve? And just be gentle with yourself.

Give it a go. So lots of love. Bye.

Bye bye.