(10 hours) #7 Plugs SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (21st September 2021)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. The purpose of this podcast is to bore your brain and bore your mind so that you can relax, switch off and if you choose maybe even drift off to sleep.

Each recording I choose a different object to focus on and then I talk about it. I do also have other podcasts that you may be interested in. I have Let Me Bore You To Sleep which is I guess a longer version of this where I talk about random things.

Just talk about nothing really for an hour every day. I have deep sleep whisper hypnosis podcast. I have the relax and sleep hypnosis daily podcast.

I have the relax stress and pain relief podcast. There's also Jason's bedtime story time. I just got hiccups I think.

So check them out if if I haven't bored you to sleep already telling you about them. So now today I am going to talk about plugs. Now I've been using plugs since I was a child and I would say they are pretty much a lot safer than they used to be because when I was young I used to get electric shocks from plugs now and then which was a bit surprising because my father was an electrician and he rewired the house and you know he was in charge of the safety of the electrics within the house that we lived, the family home.

So I was kind of you know thinking back to it I do wonder how come I did get so many electric shocks. It's a bit weird really and I think my dad must have got very tired of doing stuff you know because he worked so hard because I was always nominated to you know unplug things, unplug things in.

So it's like the television needs plugging in or the vacuum cleaner or the whatever it might be maybe the lawnmower and my dad would always like call say Jason we used to call me son I'm not sure if he knew my name but he called me over and he said can you plug this in please and as I was walking towards you know the plug socket I'd hear him giggling so I don't know if there's any anything in that.

I guess he was just a happy happy man and he was enjoying the build up to mowing the lawn I guess he was excited about it.

But I remember once you know he called me up he actually phoned up the house and he said can I meet him at this address and I said what's the address he said oh I'm doing I'm rewiring someone's house I was wondering if you can come over I said what for he said I've got a plug that needs plugged in plugging in and I said daddy why would you want me to come all the way from home to the next town because that's where it was just to plug something in

and my dad said oh go on please I said okay and I did and I can't believe it again I got an electric shock it was uh I thought one at one point I was going to end up having superpowers but that never never happened but I struggled it was quite weird because in school we did learn how to wire a plug because they used to be these was it like brown cables and yellow cable and the green cable and a blue cable and a red cable there was these different

wires that went in from the wire into the bottom of the plug socket plastic thing although I think back then plugs weren't the whole plug socket wasn't that made of metal I can't remember and I don't know and I remember um struggling to just do it it just didn't it didn't come naturally to me anything electrical just didn't seem to be something that I could really get my head around for some reason which may seem surprising considering my dad was an electrician but I just had no aptitude for it um

beside I was scared of heights and spiders at the time and he he said to me I remember because I had two other brothers and my oldest brother said he asked my oldest brother because he was about 15 at a time and he said to my older brother are you gonna um come into the business with me and be an apprentice with me and we can be father and son you know keep it in the family business and my brother said oh I'm thinking about it but right now um I'm

watching football so maybe we can talk about it after the football has finished because I'd quite like to focus on the task that I have decided to participate in which is watching the football on the television and my dad said okay son so again I'm not sure if you knew his name either and then my dad asked my younger brother in fact my younger brother said my old he was my older brother but younger than my oldest and he said dad can can I be an apprentice man with you as

well and my dad said um maybe because he was only about 13 my dad said well it's a few years away still got another three years but that would be great because we'd like to you know as I said I'd like to keep it in the family and with you and your brother that'd be great because we could um maybe you could pass it on to your children as well son and and then I sort of said well dad what what about me and everyone started laughing and I thought well

that's a bit rude a bit rude why are you laughing and they said well you you can't even put a plug in without electrocuting yourself I said yeah but at least I my socks are the same as each other and they're not odd socks and my brother said well neither are mine what is the point I said I don't know I'm trying to think of something and I did think of something a really good put down but it was last month so it's a little bit late and basically well you

smell that was that's what I was gonna say would have been brilliant if only I thought about it at the time 40 years ago so it seemed to be almost set in stone that I wasn't going to be an electrician which seemed a little I don't know to me it seemed a little bit a little bit rude in a way to discount me just based on the the couple of house fires that I caused oh I forgot to mention that but it was an accident I didn't realize that electricity and

water didn't mix it wasn't my fault but I still even now having learned to put a plug together to wire a plug from being at school I still have ended up getting it wrong and I don't know how because it's so easy well for those that do it right I guess it's easy if you do it wrong until you know the shock comes but now the the plugs seem to be a lot safer than they used to be and it seems it for example the last time I wired a plug

was for a bedside lamp and when I plugged it in the lamp exploded set fire to the bed my girlfriend wasn't very happy she never did like being woken up so I didn't really I don't know how I did that wrong because plugs are a lot easier now to to do I mean there was a time when plugs would come separate in a package you'd have you'd have the plug separate to the wire and you'd have to wire you'd have to connect the plug to the wire in order to use

the electrical item but now the plugs are all connected and so many plugs now especially for electrical things the plug is almost foldable like a foldable plug like a deck chair almost but you can't sit in it and I wouldn't want a deck chair like a plug because that'd be uncomfortable but now they're quite interchangeable and you can use the same plug sometimes to charge your phone or charge headphones or to you know to power a laptop all kinds of things and there's no wiring required now I'm not sure if

they have fuses or not but because I didn't know about fuses until my neighbor told me and my toaster broke and the reason I well every time not every time because at one point it did work but it got to the point when whenever I put toast or bread into the toaster the whole flat would short circuit again you know 40 years ago I'd have got electrocuted but now things just short circuit on me maybe maybe that's my superpower electricity is allergic to me wow that's amazing it's amazing whoa anyway

I my friend said to me let me have a look at it and I said why are you talking like that he said what do you mean why am I talking like that I said you don't normally talk like that he said oh okay sorry I thought I'd just test out a new way of talking I fancy a new accent I said this is not the time this is serious I'm hungry and my toast is not working I need to eat and he said well you could eat bread I said

I don't want to eat bread I want toast he said what about breakfast cereal you've got plenty there have you got milk in the fridge I said I have plenty of milk and I do have breakfast cereal but that's not the point I've got my heart set on toast I've been looking forward to it for 10 minutes and I don't want to disappoint myself he said I think you're really going a little bit overboard with your toast fetish I got so angry I said it's not a fetish it's a lifestyle

and he said well we have to agree to disagree I said no I actually I actually disagree with your choice to try to agree to disagree I disagree with it I disagree and he said you want help with the toaster or what and I said yeah I would like I would like a bit of help please and he said well you need to start being a bit nicer I said shut up are you talking about being nice it's such not better I am nice he said there you just being rude

to me I said I'm never rude by the way have you had a bath this week and he said see why why are you saying stuff like that I said but I just want I'm just I get grumpy when I haven't had my toast he said really you need to see a doctor I said you need to see a doctor about your smelly head he said he started laughing he said smelly head what are you on about I said I don't know I think my blood sugar level's gone down I

need the toast now and he said okay and I explained to him what was going on I explained the details of the um when I would put the bread into the slots of the toaster and it's a special toasty bread it's actually got it's called toasty yet the bread's too big to actually go into the slots which is kind of um isn't ironic don't you think yeah yeah and he said it might be the oh what's that thing you put in it a thingy and I said a thingy and he

said no that the thing that goes in the plug and it if it goes if it breaks or goes it cuts off everything it's there for your safety I said okay so for everyone's safety and he said no it was invented for your safety I said what do you mean he said didn't your dad tell you I said what he said your dad invented it and it's basically um he did a lot of experimentation apparently when he when you were young and he discovered a way to make plugs safe and

that's that's why he's got that lives on a yacht now did you did you not wonder about that I said no I just I figured he likes yachts he likes to go to sleep bobbing up and down and I said what is the thing that's in the plug and uh I can't remember what he said I forget what it you know it's a little long it's not long but it is long but it's um I forget I forget what it's called but it's he said that might have broken so you

need to get some more I said don't you have any he said no I said you have plugs though don't you he said yeah he said well I said what can I have can't you give me one of your plugs or the the thingy out of your plug he said you mean the fuse and I said yeah the fuse it's almost as if I googled it while I was talking and and he said well no then my stuff won't work and I said I don't mind he said but I mind

I want things I want my stuff to work if I give you the fuse out of my plugs or one of my plugs then that thing won't work I said you're very selfish and he said oh you made a funny noise when you said selfish I said what do you mean he said you said you're very selfish like that I said I don't know it's just just a wow wow talk he said oh okay I said can't you give me a fuse please he said no and I took this opportunity

for a pun I said are you refusing me a fuse and we laughed we rolled around laughing for 41 seconds exactly and then we both jumped back onto our feet and he said you need to order some why don't you order some from uh you know online and I said oh wait a minute I do actually have some I think so I went to the storage cupboard and I pulled out a box and I had about a hundred of them in a box all different types I forgot all about it

and he put the fuse in the plug and he didn't have to take the plug apart he basically just the plug the fuse came out of the bottom of the plug and he put the another fuse back in and the toaster worked now had I known about because the fuse being broken kept tripping the the electric box so the lights would go off and everything and I have to try and find my way around and I'd be in the darkness of the storage cupboard trying to find the right thing to

flick and then after a few few months of doing this I realized there was a light in the storage room but I knew I knew there was a light in the storage room I just didn't know that it was had a separate connection so it worked even when the rest of the flat was dark so I found that quite exciting and I'm really pleased I got a chance to tell someone about it because it's hard to keep interesting things like that inside so he changed it and I said thanks but

I just wish that I'd found out about this fuse thing in the past like because at that point I'd already chucked away three different toasters and a kettle with the same issue so I had a kettle that every time I turned it on the whole place would just go dark and one one time I realized I was just had my eyes closed so that was good but but I ended up chucking away one one kettle and I think two toasters I think it was over the last sort of year or

so it might be more than one kettle it was only one kettle at a time but I just figured that it wasn't working anymore so I just chucked it away because the inconvenience of having to keep going into the the dark cupboard trying to you know fiddle around trying to find something that would turn on the lights again was just a bit too much and then when it came to the toast I said it was just yeah it pushed me over the limit of my frustrations because I needed, I was hungry, I needed the toast sometimes you know some people would say well you've got Weetabix, you've got Corn Flakes, Breakfast Cereal, Porridge, why why such a big deal about the toast?

Well that's my business, I don't see why I should have to explain myself to others especially when it's something as personal as toast.

Other plug stories I have is the first iPhone I ever purchased, well I got it as a contract, and I plugged it in just to charge it up and the plug exploded like bang, it didn't explode as soon as I plugged it in because otherwise I'd have been close to it um but I was sitting, I found I plugged it in and I was sitting the other side of the room and suddenly bang and the whole of the plug was burnt but it didn't affect the iPhone at all had no effect on the iPhone I was very very surprised very surprised indeed,

I remember at the time thinking to myself I'm very surprised at that really didn't expect that to happen very surprising yeah trying to think of other plug stories, can't really think much more although I do quite like the plugs now the plugs just are safer and and I think because in my childhood I've learned to be, to have a healthy respect for plugs of all kind and I think the plug I didn't like most was the one that I stood on it had its pins,

it was just on the floor and I stood on the three pins and me and that plug fell out for a long time, it did take a while for me to trust it again it was unnecessary and I think quite childish to do that to me, it's a bit spiteful actually to set me up and trick me like that and that was a shock, I remember thinking to myself well that was shocking and it was unpleasant but since then I've got on with most plugs,

haven't had a huge amount of problems with plugs of late and I'm quite pleased with that because I guess one of my ambitions in life was to have a healthy relationship with plugs eventually and I think hand on heart I would say that I get on with 87% of plugs so 87% I get on just really well, very easily, very, yeah it's very natural but there's about I'd say 10% that is hit and miss sometimes get on, sometimes you don't, just you know differ,

different opinions sometimes you know in a lot of them I have to avoid talking about politics, it's like okay but then there's that, I think it's three, there's three plugs that I would class as my archenemies and I avoid them, I've actually moved to get away from at least one of them, I keep away from them because when you think the amount of plugs there are in the world, billions of plugs,

why let like one plug affect you or in this case three so I try to just keep away from them but generally my relationship with plugs is fairly good and I'd forgotten about some of that stuff until I decided to talk about it yeah so I hope that was useful and relaxing so remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy that's enough bye