(no music) #1153 - Three weeks without sugar - Let Me Bore You To Sleep (3rd July 2024)

Ah, hello, hello, welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

I hope the picture's all right. Recording this... It's... is it twilight? I don't know, about half past six-ish in the evening and um... It's still light outside but it's not like lighty, lighty, light, light, light, you know, it's more dull. Dully, a little bit dully dull.

Yeah, that made sense when I said it. I thought, and then I heard the words come out of my mouth and it didn't make so much sense. Dully dull dull brighty bright bright bright bright.

So, hey, check out my website jasonnewland.com. It's groovy. I've added a few more things on there. The first page is all the latest recordings, audio recordings, but I've also got sections for videos which will take you to a page which has all the videos from YouTube.

That's a page within the website. There's also a YouTube link which you can click to YouTube, the YouTube channel. I've also got, at the moment, Jason Chatz videos.

You can click on that, Jason Chatz. There's a few old videos from like, blimey, six, seven years ago. I might add some more if I find them.

And also there's Andre videos as well, so videos of Andre. And there's also a section with old videos, like really old ones from maybe 10, 15 years ago. So yeah, it's 176 of them.

So it's basically a playlist and you can just click down on whatever you want to listen to, watch, rather. And it's just sort of funny to laugh at, really. Or you could just look at me now and have a good laugh.

So yeah, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the YouTube channel. As far as uploading all the old videos, because I'm starting to get a bit bored of doing it, if I'm honest with you. And the plan was to upload all the old stuff and then start making new videos like this.

Because I haven't made a video like this for quite a while. And even when I do do them, it's quite sporadic. Unlike the podcasts, which are quite regular.

So I don't know for some reason, for some reason, the the more popular videos on YouTube are the ones where I show my funny face. I don't quite understand that, to be honest. Because the audio, especially the hypnosis stuff, the audio is better quality, possibly on the recordings without where I'm not like on screen.

And there's no distraction. And also, with I'm guessing with the hypnosis stuff, people would have their or the relaxation recordings or the sleep recordings. People who are viewing them, videos, then videos would have their eyes closed during, you know, that's why I always say only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Because I assumed that a lot of people would have their eyes closed. I know I would. Sometimes I do, when I make recordings, I have my eyes closed.

And even when I make these ones where I'm awake, not that I'm not awake when I make the other ones, but I do fall asleep sometimes when making the other ones. Yeah, so and I want to talk a little bit just a sassy update on the website side of things. Still in the process of building the podcasts on the actual website, because that's a it's a big job.

And I couldn't be bothered to do anything today on that. But I've added some pages and made it a bit better. And the problem I have, and it's probably a good problem to have is I got too much stuff.

I didn't think I'd ever say that got too many recordings. 1000s of recordings that's without the music. That's that's just on their own without any background music, without five hours or 10 hour versions just on their own 1000s.

And it's a lot to kind of organize, you know, I'm trying to organize them. Not just for one mainly for the audience, but also for me. So I can kind of see what I've done and maybe revisit and see if there's anything good.

Because I figure out of all those recordings, there must be a couple of decent ones must be at least two, two good recordings out there. And another reason why I've tried to, you know, thinking about putting everything onto YouTube is that way. It's also a backup.

So I'm trying to because I've lost so much of my material, so much of my recordings, well over 1000 recordings over the years. And just through having not backed up the stuff correctly. So I've now got a hard drive, I've got three hard drives.

Sounds dodgy, but it's not dodgy. Three hard drives. So one for all the videos.

What's all the videos that I upload to YouTube. So all the videos, whether they're me on screen or not, are all on one hard drive. They're also on YouTube.

And I might also do a YouTube backup channel as well. So all the stuffs on YouTube, not all the videos so far that I've created. I think there might be a few that aren't so I got to look into that.

And all the audios are on the the mp3 files from podcasts are all on a different hard drive. And then the third hard drive, porn. On the third hard drive is just bits and bobs, old photographs, family photographs.

And so I've been going through that one, because that was the original one. So that's where I found videos of Andre, old pictures of Andre. And so I'm trying to put that together.

And my intention is to put together a nice video, like a tribute to him. And with lots of pictures and video clips, all one video, it might last like an hour, but that's too long. But I'll probably be the only one watching it.

There's a lot of the clips I've got on there only a few seconds long. There's a couple that are a few minutes, but there's not many long videos of him. Because he was a ferret and he didn't sit still for two seconds.

You know, I used to creep up on him. Again, sounds weird. When he was asleep on the bed, or wherever, but I'd sneak up, just try and get a decent picture with his little tongue sticking out.

And occasionally I'll do it, I'll get a picture. But it was hard, because as soon as he saw I was going to do a picture, he'd move. And sometimes I'd have to turn the light on in order to actually get a picture.

And that's, well startling, probably. But when he was completely asleep, nothing could wake him up. Seriously, you play a drum set inside his ear, and it wouldn't wake him up.

It'd be a very small drum set, but you know, the point is, he was gone. Completely gone. Almost, I suppose like hibernation-ish, ish, ish.

So yeah. And what else? I would like to do some Jason Chats, but the Jason Chats are very, very similar to the Let Me Bore You To Sleep, except they're a bit more, I guess, more honest. In a sense of, I talk about things that I wouldn't talk about in these Let Me Bore You To Sleep.

Things that I might brush over, I might touch over, I might mildly stroke. In these recordings, I actually get full in and get right in there with the Jason Chats. You know, things like mental health issues and various stuff that I've been through, or that's happened, you know.

But moving on, this is something that probably should be for the Jason Chats, but I'm going to talk about it on here anyway. Just briefly, just to say thank you, I don't have my laptop on, because where the camera is, that's where the laptop goes, which means I can't get access to the laptop. There's too much stuff on here.

But I've got Audible, and I've got a book on Audible. If you don't know what Audible is, it's basically Audible books, audio books. So I've got an Audible book download of, I forget her name, Beattie, Joanne Beattie, and it's about codependence.

I think it's Codependence No More, I think that's the name of it. So I've listened to it twice. It's eight hours long, the book, so listen to it twice.

And I can honestly say it's given me a different perspective upon first of all, what I thought codependent. Can you hear Vinnie? He's basically barking. He's in the bedroom because he started barking.

That's why I put him in the bedroom. He's now barking at someone in the garden. It's very loud, isn't it? He just doesn't stop.

I don't know why. I think, is he protecting the place or is he just excited? Because, you know, there's theories, I see theories online, he's protecting the place. But if I open the door right now, he would go down, no matter who it was, he'd be excited to see them and try to kiss their face.

How is that protecting the place? If someone was trying to break in here, if he could, he'd open the door for them. He's not trying to protect anything. I let him bark.

He's on the windowsill in the bedroom. And bless him. I don't like putting him in now close the door.

I don't want to put him in a bedroom, but he goes from zero to 60 in an instant, like completely quiet and then really, really, really, really quickly. Another dog's now barking back. So they're just talking to each other.

Hey, how you doing? You all right? Yeah, I'm all right. Thanks. Yeah, you? Yeah.

You had your dinner yet? Yeah, yeah. I had some earlier. What do you have? Dog food.

If he continues for much longer, I'm going to have to go out, go in there, close the window, remove him from this windowsill. And, uh, well, I just went and got in. I let him out of the bedroom and he's now in here with me.

The door's closed. He just had some food. In fact, shall I get him for you? All right.

I managed to get on, um, Finny, rather, to cuddle, to get up here. He doesn't like being held, especially when I make him, you know, filming. He doesn't like it.

Do you? Look. Hey, hey. He doesn't like it at all.

You want to say hello to everyone? You want to say hello? Hello. Hey. Okay.

What's this? Look. There you go. He doesn't want to be up here.

I thought about doing a, having some kind of thing behind me or next to me where he could just be sitting. And then I thought maybe I'd have to tie him, not tie him up, but I had him on his lead that's attached to something so that he could be comfortable, but he can't get off because he left it. No matter how high it was to try and climb off or jump off.

But then if he doesn't want to do that, then there's not really any point. I just think it'd be cute because he's so lovely. So cute.

And you won't see or hear what I, what happened just then, but he tried to, I tried to coax him onto the settee with a treat so I could like pick him up and he knew straight away. That's what I was trying to do. Not the end of the world.

I'm picking you up. He's like, what am I going to do? I'm not going to hurt him. I'm not going to hurt you.

Just doesn't. He's not a cuddly. He cuddles on his time when he chooses.

If he wants to snuggle up to me, he will. But if I want to snuggle up to him, no. It's a shame really.

Oh well. You know, the amount of times I wake up in the morning or you know, halfway through the night and he's proper cuddled, curled up to me. Another thing he does is when I, when I faced the wall, because part of the part of the bed is against the wall and the side bit, the side bit here, one of the sides, not both sides.

Otherwise I struggled to get into the bed with my, let's say the door. Mind you, I have lived in bedrooms that were only, only just bigger than the actual bed. Seriously, like get in and that's it.

All you had was the bed and just a little, a little wardrobe area at the bottom of the bed. You could just get in and climb onto the bed. Yeah.

I think those were the days before rules, before landlord rules, you know, where how a room had to be a certain width in order to be rented out. There is a lot of, when I was younger, there's a lot of box rooms that were rented out that weren't big enough. They weren't, oh itchy nose, they weren't, they weren't big enough.

They, they were literally, they were called box rooms. I thought they were called box rooms because they were kind of square, but that's most rooms, isn't it? I guess, apart from those that aren't, but I didn't realise it was actually called a box room because that's where you put your crap. That's where you, you move into a room, move into a house and the box room is where you just put all the rubbish, all the stuff that you don't want out.

It's a storage room basically, where you keep your boxes. So I've lived in a few rooms like that over the years. It's weird because when I think about that, I realise how fortunate I am, even though it is late in life and, you know, I'm getting on now, but at least I'm not living there.

At least I'm not living in those tiny little rooms anymore. But anyway, I did it for 30 years or 26 years, whatever it was. Let's, let's work it out.

So I got this flat when I was in 2015, April 2015. I left school at 15. So 1986.

So I was living in rooms and a couple of flats and just all different things for years. So from the age of 15 to 1986, 96, 2006, 2016. So 28 years.

I served my time. I served my time. And yeah, anyway, not really relevant.

I was laying down on my left side facing the wall, because normally I lay down on my right side to start with. And then after a while, because there's the sideboard, sideboard, like the set of drawers on the right hand side, because let's say the bed's there. That's the bed.

It's against the wall. The headboard is against the wall. There's a wall.

So that is a different wall, that wall, and then there's the wall crease corner thing. And then there's another wall and that's where the side of the bed is. And that goes all the way down and then there's a window and on the right hand side, kind of where the pillows are, because a double bed.

On the right side, there's a set of drawers. On top of those set of drawers is where I put my phone and I listen to music at night. Either I listen to music or I listen to classical music or I listen to an audio book or sometimes I listen to LBC radio or sometimes I listen to classic FM.

But if I've got a subscription to a streaming service or audio, then I might listen to that. So there's a mixture between that and Audible. And at the moment, here's something worth doing.

If you've got an iPhone, I don't know if this is everywhere in the world or if it's even if it's everywhere in the UK, but there's an offer, which is free. It's free Apple Music for two months. So I don't have to pay anything until the 25th of August.

It's not bad, is it? Because my Amazon run out and it's a pound less than Amazon. So it's $11.99. Amazon is $12.99 a month. So $11.99 and I do listen to a lot of music.

I stopped, I cancelled it last month. The Amazon. Before that I used to have Spotify.

So I've tried all three. That's about it, isn't it? Any other three, any bigger ones? I didn't bother with Apple. I just didn't see I never bothered with it.

It's like well, Amazon, Spotify. Spotify is kind of the most famous one, perhaps. So I had that for a few years on and off.

And now, I'm quite pleased with Apple, Apple Music. There's a lot of stuff on there. They've even got comedy albums, which I was very surprised because I think on Amazon Music, they'll have the comedy albums, but they'll only have a few of the tracks on there, which is pointless.

There's no point having an album and just having, let's say there's an each track is like two minutes long, three minutes, because it's just stand up comedy. And what's the point? There's no point listening to something if it's not got the whole thing. But on Apple, so far, it's got the whole albums.

I've not tried everything, but even things like Lenny Bruce, from albums from the 50s, comedy albums from the 50s, full albums on there. So I was very impressed. George Carlin, another one that was from the early 70s, about 72.

But the full album, Class Clown, was it FM? I forget. I used to have all of his albums on tape in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s. But it's so nice.

I think it's a like, suddenly, there's a kind of end of the world scenario. But you know, this survivors, I'm a survivor, of course, in my story, because it's fantasy hasn't happened yet. Therefore, it's fantasy.

I don't choose to survive. Sorry. So I'm in a bunker.

What am I going to do for music? Because I do not own one CD, one record, one tape of music, nothing. Everything's streamed. And the internet probably, probably won't be around.

If you know, if everything kind of goes, and that seems a shame, because really, to be prepared for that, because I know there are some people that are very prepared. They've got bunkers, they've got everything. And I imagine they've probably got libraries of books, and 1000s of DVDs and CDs, and probably multiple video record, video players, and CD players and all that stuff, you know, just for when one breaks and like, so I'm not very prepared.

But it won't be any television, probably. I just see someone writing into me like, Dear Jason, never watched you on video before. So this is my first time, you know, observing a Let Me Bore You To Sleep recording, just spat them when I spoke.

And I'm not sure how relaxing talking about World War Three is. I don't know if that's the most relaxing thing. I didn't mention war.

I just said, you know, briefly covered over what might lead us there. But just talk about the bunker thing. Mind you, bunker this that doesn't bring a very nice.

Yeah, maybe not. But I do wonder, so I should have started preparing. But it's not really good for me because I live in a flat.

I'm above, I'm not just above ground, I'm really above ground. So I don't have a bunker. I don't even know any holes.

You know, some people, you know, you know, when you were a kid, and you're exploring the countryside, and you find a hole that's under a like a hill, and it's there's a there's a bear in there. So you kind of don't go in most of the year. But you know, it's like, oh, it's a nice place to go.

If ever, you know, that's where I'm gonna go. That's, that's, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna hide in there for 10 years.

Maybe not. Right, time for a song. When I fall in love, it will be completely just kidding, just pretty bad for an hour.

I mean, that's how long it lasts. The love that is not, you know, that's two minutes, two minutes. I remember when I was younger, I was so good at being quick.

When it came to loving, I timed it just really well between programs, you know, when the adverts are on, I can literally get everything done and still make myself a cup of tea in time for the next section of the program. My girlfriend at the time wasn't as impressed as me. I don't know why.

Are you liking the grey? Because some people might not have seen me for years. Or they've watched some of the old videos I posted and thought that was me now because they've not seen me before. And they see me now like, oh my god, you're so old.

And yeah, yeah, that's because I am. When there was a time when I made these videos, and I didn't even have glasses. I had very few grey hairs.

I had hair, blimey. I mean this, I've been growing this for about seven years. Look, don't you mean 53 years? No, because I shaved it seven years ago.

I wonder what my hair would look like if I'd never had it cut? What would people look like if no one ever, ever, ever, ever had their hair cut? Imagine what a mess I'd look. I mean, it'd be like literally out there. It's too far.

The lens doesn't even cover how far it would go. Because my hair is incredibly curly. Well, you can see little bits of it like the sides, it goes curly there.

It's very puby and it's like just goes when it gets to a certain length. There's some videos of me with longer hair, and it does get curly, seriously. But I don't let my hair get very long.

I haven't done for the last time I let my hair get long, long was in 2000. No 1994. Because in 1991, I decided to grow my hair.

I don't know what month it was. It might be like January, February, maybe March. Decided to grow my hair long.

And it was one of the few things in life that I actually stuck at. I really, I was determined. So I've never had long hair.

I had long hair. Okay, I did used to have quite long hair in the 70s. And even the early 80s because that was the style.

Not that I was stylish, but everybody had thick curly hair, you know, generally in the 70s, in the 80s. That's the 90s, last century, the 1980s. And but once I started going to the sea cadets, they were shaving my head off, not my head, but shaving me, shaving me, just just my head.

And all the way through. Yeah, pretty much all the way through school. I quite short hair, I do believe.

And I'm trying to think, I could show you some pictures of me but I don't know where the pictures are. I don't know where the I did my dad put some pictures like a photograph album together. And a couple of years ago, there's pictures of me there's one of me in my sea cadet uniform with my brother, who had air cadets, he was in the air cadet.

So he had his uniform on I had my uniform on. And it's amazing the difference in size between the two of us. So he was two years older.

But it was so much bigger than me. But height, why why anyway, he was just bigger. And I look so little.

I was like 1112. So he would have been 14. And then there's a picture of me in my karate costume with my I think it was a yellow belt or green belt on.

It's weird, because I found another picture of me when I did Taekwondo. Shortly before I moved in here. And I was standing there with exactly the same.

That's called costume, but the same guy, same get up. But this time, I'm so what 1424 3440 30 years later. And it's amazing the difference in body.

Like there's my belly just you can hardly see the belt, you can see the size of the belt, but the front of the belt is covered with my belly. I didn't have that problem when I was when I was a kid. In fact, one of the problems I had was keeping the belt up, because I was so skinny.

Sometimes it was like you ever see those magic tricks where someone puts like a thing and they push it and the belt would just meet in the middle become untied because my waist was almost invisible. Just that made sense visually. When I said it.

Yeah. Well, Vinnie's being good. It's now eating one of his bones.

You know what I was for I should do what I could do is make a video of him while I'm doing this. And just have him like in in the corner. Just so you can have like a a Vinnie cam.

It's not a bad idea. You know. So I don't know if you can hear that I've got downstairs playing music now.

Or someone I don't know somewhere in the garden. I can't really place where it's coming from. But I hope that you're not picking it up on here.

But you might do as a chance. I'm trying to think what else took Vinnie. Oh, did I tell you I've been doing press ups.

Exciting life I lead. I had a shower today as well. Yeah, that was so boring.

Why did I even tell you that? Anyway, I had a shower. Tomorrow is election night. And I'm gonna have a pizza.

Yep. I gotta be careful now because I can't eat sugar. I can't eat chocolate.

I can't have fizzy drinks anymore. Anything with kind of high sugar. I'm laughing because I just can't believe how rubbish things have got.

But hey, it's okay. I haven't had any sugar. In fact, I ran out of sugar two weeks ago.

So I had no sugar in my tea for three weeks. Four weeks maybe actually to be honest. I think the first week it was on and off.

I started scraping the tub which had the sugar in. So I had a little bit and just I was trying to cut it down to like half a teaspoon. And then the second week, I'd run out of sugar I think or nearly and it was just bits of sugar that I was trying to you know when the the sugar bowl or the tub has little bits of sugar just like around the edges.

I was trying to break that in and the third week I found some on the floor. So I was trying to get that up and the fourth week and I saw something in the garden in the mud that looked like sugar. So I thought I'll try that.

But basically, my stomach's gurgling means I'm hungry. I think my stomach's hungry. On on on on on.

Yeah, so for the last two weeks, zero sugar. I don't think I've had any chocolate. No coke.

I very I rarely drink coke now anyway. But occasionally I treat myself to a drink a fizzy drink. Like every now and then, you know, there was a time when I would have about six cans of coke a day.

Those days, years ago, so long. I haven't done that for quite a while. I'm actually cut down to four a day.

And what was it five. And gradually. So I think what happened is I used to drink cans of lager, maybe six a night.

And then I stopped. So don't drink any alcohol ever now. Just because I can't.

Anything fizzy really causes me heartburn anyway. And also, yeah, I just stopped. And I think I replaced the alcohol with coke.

And then the coke was gone. While drink coke during the week and only drink alcohol on a Saturday night. Maybe just have a few cans.

And that was it. You know, I don't do that anymore. So I've done that for years.

And then I was drinking coke a lot. And then I stopped. I'm not quite sure why I stopped.

I think Oh, a couple of things. I think someone kept knocking on the door asking for coke. They should annoy me.

Like I was a shop. And also, I'm trying to think. I don't know.

I'm, I guess maybe trying to lose weight, trying to cut down a bit. And then what happened in I think it was January, I think it was January, December, I think it was January, I had a toothache. And it was never had anything like that in my life.

It was absolutely awful. And I decided after that, after I managed to get that sorted. And never ever.

I'm gonna, I'm not going to drink chocolate, drink chocolate, not going to eat chocolate anymore. I'm not gonna drink coke anymore. Now stuck to the coke.

To not drinking coke. Chocolate kind of ease its way back into my life and into my mouth. Very slowly.

You know, I went weeks without eating any chocolate at all. I'm in the petrol station. I hear this little voice.

It says, JC JJ, over here, look, walk around. And there's this Mars bar and a Twix both tempting me and say, look, there's a special offer you can get both of us for just one pound 50. And we're double size, you know, you like them big.

It's a bit weird. So and I got a couple of chocolate bars, I didn't eat them. Okay, it's a lie.

I didn't eat them straight away. However, that's weird. I'm tired.

It is late today. If I'd done this earlier in the morning, or earlier in the afternoon, I wouldn't have been so tired now. Which is the most obvious statement ever.

So what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I had. I'm getting eye ache lately. So I might close my eyes.

I spend too much time looking at a computer screen. I need to reduce my eye time. Eye time.

I go to sleep. Yeah, sleepy poos. So I quite like a nice roast dinner.

Or I have some potatoes. I could have potatoes with with fish cakes or fish fingers, and some beans. The problem I've got is now whenever I order food, I go for low or no fat or low or no sugar.

So the beans are those ones with no sugar. No fat, no, you know, it's like tasteless ones. The ones that you have to actually mix with lard just to make them taste like something, which defeats the object.

I got these rice cakes. Right, rice cakes. Oh, and some hummus.

What's weird like last night I got, what did I have? Right, so I had some tuna fish, tuna tuna fish, like a little tuna tin. Some cucumber, some tomato, and some rice cakes. That was and a yogurt and a yogurt.

And it's also a natural, no added anything yogurt. And all this healthy food, it's just, it feels wrong. It's not the first time.

Not, not, not the first time that something's felt wrong. But it's not the first time that I've gone kind of healthy. I've been a vegan, I've been a vegetarian.

I've tried everything, not everything. You know, I've tried a lot of different things. Some things I just wouldn't try.

But raw food, I've never really tried that. Although what I used to do, as I waggle my finger, I used to juice. Now not in a bodybuilding sense, in a like carrots.

Because that's the thing about carrots. I mean, they're pretty disgusting. I'm not a big fan of carrots, they can taste lovely.

If you add butter. You know, I don't mind the taste, I will eat carrots. That's another thing.

I've never ever added anything to my vegetables, generally, over the years. So if I, if I boil potatoes, because what I would normally do is I've only got one saucepan now. There's the other one.

I used it for Logie, the other dog that was here for a couple of months. That was his bowl for drinking out of. Because he was so big, so I had to use a big saucepan for him.

And then I didn't really want to use it after that, to be honest. So one saucepan. So this probably wouldn't work.

But generally what I do is there's a thing I used to do for years. I'd boil the potatoes. Then once No, no, I'd boil I'd put I'd make the water boiled, put the potatoes make potatoes got to be small though cut into small bits.

And then I would add vegetables. So I know potatoes are vegetables, but I'd add like carrots, broccoli, maybe cabbage, sprouts, love Brussels sprouts, and maybe some sweet corn even. And then I take it off the boil, take off the hob that's got the the hot hob, turn off everything and just cover it over.

Or just leave it doesn't have it doesn't even have to be covered over and just leave it for a couple of hours or an hour, whatever. Usually it's left long enough and it's covered over. Everything's cooked.

It's like your own little slow cooker, slow boiler. So I used to do that for a few years because especially if you just got one saucepan, so to try and cook you but cooking things that take a different amount of time. It's just a bit easier.

If you know to do it that way. That's what I always found. Very effort loss.

Very simple. In fact, I wish I'd done it now. Yeah.

But then potatoes don't take too long. Was it 20 minutes, half an hour, and they're done and they so does not take a huge amount of time. Was that wind? Well, all right, so I'm laying on the bed facing the wall.

And I've got one leg kind of over the other, not even I'm cuddling a duvet, because I've got no one to love. And Vinnie climbs on my legs. He doesn't do it straight away.

But when he thinks I'm asleep, he climbs on my legs and cuddles up into me. It's cute in it. Oh, sorry.

Sorry, mate. I annoy him a lot. Honestly, he tolerates me I think just about.

So, yeah, I might do that. Tomorrow, I've got a doctor's appointment on the phone, which is just discussing my blood tests results. I mean, I've already been told that I'm pre-diabetic and high cholesterol.

That's the results I got already from the receptionist. So I'm going to discuss it more. Now see, and this is a month ago, maybe five weeks even.

And in that time, as what I've been doing is trying to make a few changes. So getting sugar down, or zero sugar really, I know there's always going to be sugar and stuff. And I do still eat processed food.

I'm trying to reduce it. My breakfast cereal, I'm trying to eat stuff that isn't processed. Everything's processed, but something that's got the least amount of other stuff in other than what it's supposed to have.

And fruit and veg. And you know, I'm not really a big meat eater, to be honest. I do have some tuna fish, but I don't eat much in the way of meat these days.

And I still drink tea. I have one cup of coffee in the morning when I wake up with my breakfast. It's the only coffee I have, like one a day.

But since I don't have sugar, it kind of tastes awful. Tea still tastes awful without sugar, but it tastes less awful than it used to after two or three weeks of having it. It's starting to become less disgusting.

I mean, I still don't finish the cup. This morning I was thinking, why am I drinking tea? I don't even want to drink tea. I was not going to have it.

Or was it last night? Last night I decided I'm not going to have a cup of tea tomorrow morning, or a cup of coffee. And I woke up and it was cold. It was like just after five o'clock in the morning.

And it wasn't warm, even though it's, what, the third of July? Second of July? Third of July? It was cold. I mean, like cold. It wasn't at all warm.

We know what cold is. I know, but it just seems weird to say it was cold in July, but it was cold. And it really is July.

Why have I got a cardigan on? I shouldn't have to have a cardigan on in the summer. Not indoors. Not really.

Not really. So what was I going to say? Oh, yes. So I'm thinking I'm not going to have a hot drink.

This is this morning, but it's too cold. I need a hot drink. Just give me some warmth, a little bit of warmth internally.

I need something warm inside me. And is that a weird thing to say? I don't know. So I just, I mean, I had, I did have, no, I didn't have any ready break.

Ah, I didn't have any ready break. I'm going to try, try to convert ready break into porridge. So move away from the ready break and start having porridge and oats and like actually cooking them.

But I've got to move into that gradually. So I do like porridge. I used to eat porridge all the time, like every day for quite a while, but it's just going to take me a little bit of time to kind of move into that.

And it might sound weird, but I need to move slowly as I did with the sugar, as I did when I stopped drinking Coke, as I've done with the painkillers because I had pain, pain relief medication for my arthritis and I've managed to cut it in half. So it's taken me months to do it. I would like to get rid of the, I'd like to get rid of the bipolar medication.

I mean, I'd like to have a full head of hair. I'd like to be six foot three. You know, there's lots of things I'd like, but I've got a bald patch that's growing bigger every day.

If anything, I'm shrinking, so I'm probably less than five foot eight and I need that medication. I need something. So yeah, and it's not a high dose either, to be honest.

So I'm not, it's not like maybe in the future I can try something different, or maybe there will be something new. Well, I'm sure there will be something in the future that will be more useful, hopefully, but you know, I'm getting on a bit. I've done quite well.

I've never been, never been sectioned. I've never been, ended up in hospital with it. So I guess I'm quite fortunate from that perspective.

There's been a couple of times when I think I could have been, had there been someone around that was actually taking notice of my behavior. But that's one of the, maybe the benefits and the opposites to living alone is not so much because I've got Vinnie, so I have to take him out. So I have to be around humans.

But that period between having him, between Andre, between Andre and him, so that period of like a year and a half, I could be up here for days, weeks even, and wouldn't, you know, it's, it's, yeah. I mean, sometimes like, oh Vinnie, I don't want to go out, do I? And he's like, yeah, well, go out. I don't want to.

And he just stares at me. Sometimes I wake up and he's like staring at me and he's on the floor staring at me. And I go back to sleep again and I'm kind of, I'm on my back, I doze off.

I wake up again and he's sitting next to me on the bed staring at me. I'm like, oh, oh, in a minute, in a minute, and he's making noises like, and like tapping me and stuff. And I fall asleep again and I wake up again.

He's lying on one, he's sitting on my chest, his face right in my, like staring at me like, he starts licking my face and like, gotta go out now, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go now, now, now. Sometimes he does it just because he doesn't want to be awake on his own. I'm sure it is.

Doesn't want to go out. Doesn't want to do anything. Not even hungry.

Just wants me to be awake because he's awake. But when he's asleep, that's it. He has to have 12 hours every night.

If we go, honestly, I'm about to tell you, if we go to bed at 10, he's still in bed till 10 o'clock. We know what 12 hours is. I know, but I'm just, just saying for the fact that if we go to bed at 10, I'll wake up at, let's say five, I might go back to bed at seven, have another couple of hours, whatever.

I get up at nine, he's still in bed. And he'll just like, after about 12 hours, like, oh, morning. It's just, honestly, he's like, got no intention of getting out of bed.

It takes him a while to settle down at night. He's very reactive to the sounds of outside, the neighbors, music, doors closing, voices, anything like that. He really is very reactive for the first like half an hour when we go to bed.

He's just fired and it's a really bad one. Yeah, it is his. Why is it when dogs fart, they always got their bums facing you? Why is that? Never farts when his bum's never facing the other way when he farts, ever.

It's never happened. Even when he lived over the road before he moved here, the woman, his mom, she said to me, whenever he farted, he always faced towards this building. Like that's before I even met him.

He knew he knew the right place to fart the right direction. So the plan for this week is tomorrow morning, doctor's appointment on the phone to discuss. All right, so there's that.

And then it's election. So it's voting. And then all night long tomorrow is the election night.

So I'm going to be up all night watching that on telly. I'll very likely fall asleep through it as well. But it's okay.

And then I will probably spend a fair bit of Friday asleep. But I just I like the I like the moments when people when the results come in of constituencies, I can't say the word constituencies, where it's a safe seat. So like, you know, a politician that's almost guaranteed to get their seat to be elected in that area, and they lose the seat.

And just to see their face when someone else gets called out, that someone else's name gets called, as having the higher number. Sometimes it's funny, because occasionally, occasionally, I found it might just be me, but occasionally, very, very rarely.

I've noticed that politicians the occasional, very, you know, unlikely situation, but a minute amount of politicians are a little bit arrogant, sometimes seem to come across as a little bit arrogant, a little bit, very sure with themselves very, almost like above the average person, tied to a tiny, tiny amount of them, of course, not most of them, just a tiny, tiny amount of them, where they got no idea about real life.

But you know what, this is the way I see it, I've got two things to talk about. Biden, that will divide the nation. It's definitely divided one nation.

And Sunak, who is our Prime Minister here. So the Prime Minister and the President of America and the Prime Minister of this country, he gets a lot of slack, people saying he doesn't know what real life is like. He's a rich.

Well, being rich doesn't mean you don't know what real life is like. If you've got a human body, you know what it's like to be human. You know, you still got to go through the same thing as everyone else, loss, rejection, illness, aging, all that stuff, it's still just everyone has to go through that regardless of what money you got in the bank.

And he's only like three foot tall. So he hasn't had it easy. You know? And then I think, if I'm right, he's, I might be wrong, but I think he's a Hindu, which means part of his religion is given away a percentage of his money to charity.

It's part of his, it's part of the religion to do that. I might be getting muddled up with Sikhs, but most of his money comes from his wife anyway. So give him a break.

He's doing his best. Who would want that job? Who'd want to lead a country? It's an impossible task. I mean, look at, I was going to say Hitler then for a second, look at Churchill.

I'll be thinking, I was watching, I watched a documentary about fascists the other night, Mussolini, and did you see the way he used to stand with his arms at his waist? It was quite funny. What's that noise? All right. Anyway, Churchill saved this country.

And some people, no, he didn't. Actually, if the history books are correct, if what's been seen is correct, then it might not be, but if it is, it probably isn't, but it pretty much definitely is. During the Second World War, and Churchill was Prime Minister, all the major people in his cabinet wanted to surrender to Hitler or to Germany.

They wanted to surrender. And Churchill said no. Or he said no.

And can you imagine if everybody, everyone else around you is saying we should do this, we need to surrender, and you're the only person saying no. It's got to be hard to go against what the popular view is. And wow, imagine what would have happened if England had surrendered.

Or I don't know, what was we back then? Britain? United Kingdom? I don't know what we was during the war. But if we had surrendered, if Churchill had surrendered, but he didn't. He refused.

And regardless of, you know, but the point, the point I'm trying, I was going towards is a few years later, I think he came back in as a Prime Minister again. So another, you know, so he was Prime Minister, then he wasn't for a few years. Then he came back in, and he got kicked out.

He was unpopular. And Labour got in because they didn't like the Tories anymore. I think, but anyway, he got kicked out.

So he wasn't popular. But history shows him as being basically the saviour of this country. Some would argue that I don't give a, I'm not interested in what anyone else got to say.

But I'm not even interested in what I've got to say really, because it's just words, really. And another thing I think about, blimey, that sounds a bit vicious. Do you ever get, what is it about leaders, governmental leaders, when they become no longer human to the populace? To the general public, they're just things to mock, or like they're not even human.

Because if I see an elderly man, regardless of what his role is, an elderly man, elderly woman, who is struggling with their health, I just want to help them, co-dependence. I just want to help them. And I don't think a lot of hatred towards the person, in the same way as even with Rishi, or with Boris Alexander, Boris Karloff, whatever his name was.

They're clearly not well. And he's got, sometimes, I mean, what's his name? Boris was really ill during lockdown. He went to hospital and he was very ill.

And there didn't seem to be a huge amount of caring towards him, considering he was a prime minister. There didn't seem to be a lot of interest in that. And then they've got this, I don't know, talk about politics.

It seems weird, because in America, they can't win whatever happens. There's no winning. It's, I'm smiling just because it's almost like a weird situation.

I don't know if I've ever seen that before during my lifetime, I don't think. Or my, when I've sort of took notice of politics, which hasn't really started when I was about 17, I started to take more notice. It was, yeah, see, it's like, oh, one's really old, but the other one's also, like, just a couple of years younger.

So they're both really old. One's aged more than the other. And one doesn't necessarily make, one of them doesn't necessarily make too much sense.

And it's not particularly coherent. And clearly, he's got some, I'm not an expert, probably some kind of brain stuff going, you know, some kind of stuff going on, which has caused him to talk incoherent and to say stuff that doesn't necessarily make sense. And then you've got Biden, who's also struggling.

See what I did there? Whee! So, see, in a way, I'm not in any camp for that, because I'm not in that country. And I can't vote. The problem is, we are England, or the UK, whatever you want to call this Britain, Britain is America's lapdog, we have been for a long time.

So anything that the President says, we just follow. This country, the government just follows for whatever reason. And probably because America, the only country that really will look out for us.

We were not made, even in Europe, look, we're not made huge friends around the world. And I know we're part of the UN and stuff, but outside of tourism, I don't, we don't necessarily offer much to other countries. You know, tourism is good for people, other countries, because we, because they rely on the West sometimes, or England area.

I don't know what I'm talking about, really, I don't care. It's just, I find it interesting. Because in America, America, and America, Americano, no one's gonna win.

They can't, they can't. Because you've got what happened with Brexit in here. It's divided the nation, divided the nation here.

And every time there's an election, or Nigel Farage kind of comes along, starts dividing people. And the whole divide and conquer thing. And it's, if you look at fascism, and how it all kind of started in Italy, it's very fascinating.

Very fast. I spent about two hours watching this documentary. It was only an hour and a half long, but I'm a bit slow.

And it was just that whole, getting people to be, to love in their country. And we're going to put you first. Where, you know, let's say, we're going to put the people in this country first, not people from other countries have come into this country.

We're gonna make sure that everyone has good jobs that are born in this country. And, and, and it's kind of like a bully, in a sense of like a bully would start off bullying one person, and all the crowd gather around like just enjoying it. Get a school, kids can be a bit cruel like that.

And then after a while, all the other kids start to get scared of that kid, because they realize that he doesn't just do it to one person. He does it, he might, he has done it to another person has seen that. And he might do it to me.

And everyone's like on eggshells around this part, this one person, 200 kids, all scared of one boy. Just because he happens to have gone through puberty a lot earlier. So he's got muscles, he's got a deep voice, and he's stronger.

200 kids in a year, maybe scared of this one boy. So it's, I've clearly got stuff from school that I need to work on. I was all right, actually, I got on with most people.

I used to bore them. I remember I had one person who would have a fight with me, and at the end of it, he just lay down and went to sleep, because I just talked to him, or talked at him for about three minutes. And that was it.

He's like, Oh, I don't. So before you can have a fight, he said, No, I just need to just need to lay down on my pillow. Don't know why he had a pillow on him.

That's weird. Who'd carry a pillow around with them? It's not very tough. So I do find what I find interesting.

And I've seen it in this country as well. As we're leading up to this election. A lot of elections going on.

What Spain was it? France was now part of Africa just had an election, I think India, different places having these elections, America's in what? December, was it November? So and I'll be here before we know it. Facebook. I see people and these aren't some of them, my friends on Facebook.

I don't know them. They just happen to be on Facebook for years. And I don't know why they're on my friends list.

Some of them don't know who they are. But they post stuff like anti one person regarding, you know, the election, the upcoming election, whether it's in America or the UK. And it's so vicious.

It's such horrible things. But in the post, then it's like, and if you agree, if you, if you vote for that person, then you're dumb and an idiot and stupid. So it's quite a blanket statement, isn't it? So you're calling all your a lot of your friends, maybe family members, stupid and idiots.

Because they have a different view to you. They have a different political belief system. And I don't, I sometimes think that we should, well, maybe I had, I remember seeing this bloke.

It's not that long ago saying, I would never be friends with someone that doesn't have the same beliefs as me. So that seems dumb. I've never had friends that had the same beliefs as me.

But you know, I've had the same. I mean, okay, if you if you talk about religious beliefs, yeah, I can understand you. It's easier to be around other Buddhists.

If you're a Buddhist, it's just easier to be a Buddhist if you're around because I don't know, you know, if you're like watching telly with a non Buddhist, and you start chanting and stuff like that. Just some, some people might think it's weird. But if you're Buddhist, because that's all they do is chant all the time.

Or, you know, if you've got a religion where you have to pray certain that time today, it doesn't fit into someone else's religion, perhaps, or someone that's not really into religion. So I can see why being around other people that have similar lifestyles, let's say. But when it comes to politics, I mean, I had this friend who had a son, and they fell out, really fell out.

And he was only like 18, 19. And she said, he just, he just got different, different beliefs to me, when it comes to politics and stuff like that. And I said, so? So what? He said, well, he annoys me.

I don't like being around people who have different beliefs. I said, he's not your friend. He's your son.

It doesn't matter what his beliefs are. It matters if he's being aggressive and stuff, obviously, but like, he's allowed to have different opinions to you. That's one of the rights of human beings is to have different opinions.

And let's face it, what are opinions anyway? So I genuinely don't know what they are. I need to look it up. I can't because my laptop's turned off.

And now someone's drilling. So I better bring that into this. Bloody hell.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself. Because you deserve to be happy.

Be gentle with yourself. Lots of love. Bye.