(10 hours) #16 Mops - SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (4th October 2021)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name's Jason Newland and this is Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes because you might get bored and when you get bored you might want to close your eyes because you might want to go buh-byes or go sleep which is buh-byes or just relax. I can't believe I just said the word buh-byes for the first time since I was about six and I'm not quite sure why I said it.

I do apologize. Well I don't apologize but it's weird. I'm apologizing to myself for letting myself down.

Now this recording as are the other objects, the boring objects, is just me talking boringly about something for 20-30 minutes and in that time you can just relax. It's a nice little distraction from your day-to-day life and gives your mind something else to think about which is completely pointless and when it's doing that you're not thinking about other stuff which means you can just your mind can slow down and you know you just have a little bit of relaxation.

So today I'm going to talk about mops.

I'm going to talk about mops. I really am and I know there's always going to be someone that's going to be thinking how and why on earth would you choose a subject like mops. Isn't this supposed to be a boring podcast? There's nothing boring about mops.

Well yeah fair enough and I guess maybe you know occasionally I will do a subject that to a lot of people would be classed as very exciting such as mops but I'll just talk about my life because my life has been very boring. Still is. I have a very boring life.

Always have done. I hope it will you know improve a little bit at some point but I had a very boring life so by telling you about my life experiences with mops even though mops is clearly a phenomenally exciting subject maybe I can you know just find something boring in it. I mean I realize it's a it's a big task but you know I'll talk about my experience with mops and you can make your own mind up whether or not this was a boring podcast or just another excitement installment in the life of mops.

So I'm trying to think my first experience of a mop. I think we when my when I was a kid my dad was always building always doing building work on the house we lived in and it was it would never seem to be complete. It was always there's always at least one room or one part of the house that seemed to be in disarray.

So there would be times when you know he'd try and get me and my 17 brothers to well he didn't try he got us to work and to help and sometimes because I was quite little and young I was um he'd get me to mop that'd be my like get me to help clean up because I couldn't do some of the more physical or manual jobs because I was only seven months old.

So you know I'd have a mop it would be a lot bigger than me and probably my first experience of a mop in my memory or my first memory of a mop would have been Fantasia. Wasn't there a mop in Fantasia that was magic and it did its own mopping? Now I thought that was a documentary so when my dad said I need you to mop the kitchen because you know he'd been putting in new units or something and I think my brothers had vacuumed but they needed me to mop the lino.

So what I did is I put the mop lint against the wall and clicked my fingers and I just waited for it to start mopping the floor on its own like in Fantasia the movie and now I now I know it's a movie but at the time I really did think it was an educational film and I remember thinking oh perhaps there's some magic words that I've that I'm missing or some magic dust or something because just standing watching it doesn't seem to be doing the trick unless it's shy you know I've only kind of found myself that a shy mop that doesn't like to you know magically mop things.

So in the end after about an hour I decided maybe I just maybe I'll show it how to do it if I get involved and I actually do a bit of mopping myself maybe the mop will get a bit of courage and a bit more confidence in himself and maybe then do a bit of mopping and I'll be able to sit back and have a cigar but it didn't happen but I didn't have any cigars but because I was seven months old but it was quite annoying because I really really

wanted the mop to just get on and do its job but it didn't and I didn't really know how to do the mopping myself because I thought that mopping involved watching a mop mop the floor but for some reason this I guess the mop was faulty needed to be taken back to the shop. I did I thought about like how can I contact Mickey Mouse but I didn't know there was no internet back then and we had a telephone directory but I couldn't read at that time so in the end I had to do it myself.

I was very disappointed and that was my first experience really of the mop and I didn't mind it actually the only thing about it is doing underneath the counters of the kitchen the some of the shreds or the I don't know what you call them because it's a mop isn't it got lots of different strings some of them would get caught underneath the the edges of the bits of the kitchen and would pull off which meant I had to kneel down and try and get them out again which I didn't find enjoyable.

I didn't mind it but I didn't find it enjoyable it wasn't I didn't do it once and think I've now found the passion in my life you know I didn't didn't really gain any kind of sense of um I don't know satisfaction or nothing seemed to be you know it's just a bit tedious a bit a bit annoying but I did it anyway and I mopped the floor and my brother said oh that's not done properly and I said well don't matter he said well there's a big streak all the

way down the floor that you've not cleaned and I said it doesn't matter and my brother said why I said well no matter how I do it dad's always he's going to find something wrong with it it's not going to be done right and he said oh that's a good point so he tipped the bucket over and all the water went everywhere and he found that funny he thought he's being helpful I don't think he thought that actually but uh in the end I cleaned it all up and that was

it that's the end of that story really it wasn't wasn't an exciting story I think I might have gone out into the garden and looked at a tree for because I used to quite like doing that going into the garden and just looking at a tree because we had a few trees in the garden one really big one which had no not prunes plums there was a plum tree the one fruit that I didn't really care for if I'm honest not really a plum person now plums can be nice you

know I guess like a plum pie or plum crumble with lots of sugar to make it nice and sweet but plums on their own yeah no I'm quite happy just to to remove the memory of the plum tree from my mind really it's it didn't hasn't left me feeling fulfilled so but I think I did do that I used to go out in the garden and just stare at a tree and sometimes I'd move my feet around do a little dance but very slow dance in fact slow so slow that

no one would even know that I was dancing it would just look like I was occasionally moving my feet very slowly but I knew I knew that I was dancing so that's what I did and I also knew that it didn't matter that others didn't know I was dancing because I was dancing for me I was I was dancing to fulfill my own needs which was to dance in the garden very slowly and the reason I didn't dance quickly is because I wanted to savour the moment I wanted to enjoy

each movement without having it all done you know moving too fast and then I thinking well that's that's that done now that's the dancing out of the way um or that's just I wanted I wanted the fun and the pleasure to last a little bit longer than it would have done had I moved at a quicker pace now other mops I had a job in a bakery when I was about 13 and I had one of my jobs in there in fact it wasn't just there I had a job in

the restaurant which was part of the bakery before I worked in the bakery and I used to do the washing up and like kitchen porter kind of thing so part of the job well the big part of the job really was to rinse the plates off put them on a rack put the rack inside the washing machine wash them and then put them into the rinser which would be it would like rinse them rinse off all the water you know all the soaps and stuff a very very hot level of

water and then leave them for as long as you can before touching them because they were very hot to the touch but sometimes when the restaurant was very busy we had to take them off the rack fairly quickly so there's no drying involved because the water was so hot that the plates would dry instantly and then I would move the the rack where the plates would go would be behind the sink and the two washing machines well the washing machine and the rinser so I would move them the plates and

put them onto the shelves of you know the big metal shelves quite a few shelves and then the waiting staff would take the plates from the other side and use those plates to put out onto the table or to put the food onto before taking the food out to the table I guess that's a more sensible order of things isn't it put the food on the table first not on the table put the food on the plate before taking the food out to the table otherwise what's in your hands isn't

it it's just messy unhygienic I imagine but back then we didn't have hygiene or germs germs weren't even known about um I think it was almost compulsory to if you worked in a kitchen to either smoke or pick your if you was a cook that was I think it was in the contract I do believe so at the end of the to be actually not even at the end of the day because the or the evening because we were working with water uh bits of food have fallen on the floor

sometimes we would have food fights we weren't supposed to but I don't know it just seemed like the right thing to do sometimes life presents you with an opportunity and you need to grab it with all of your hands so that's what we did we chucked food at each other and it went on the floor and it became a bit slippery and a bit dirty and so usually halfway through it'd also be water spilling on the floor from the sink as well halfway through the shift would give it a good

old mop over give it a sweep first and then mop the floor because that was a way of cleaning it and then at the end of the shift you know when we'd all finished we'd do the same thing again but because we'd done it in the middle there was less dirt to clean and it just didn't seem to take as long um at one point I thought maybe we should just have the mop there and mop every 10 minutes but no one seemed to be interested in my idea I wrote

it down I presented it to everyone that worked there thought maybe have some kind of uh vote but no one was interested so we just went back to the normal process of mopping the floor halfway through the shift and then at the end mopping keeping it nice and clean and if I remember rightly part of my job was to also clean the kitchen floor as well the the kitchen where the the cooks and you know had been dropping food and all kinds of stuff on the floor but it was tiled

the floor was tiled so it's fairly easy as long as you don't let it build up over you know a few years it's quite easy to keep the floor clean if you regularly mop so I guess it all worked out quite well now the next time I used a mop was when I worked in a chip shop and as you can imagine um they served chips and fish and things and pies savaloys whatever sausage rolls I think rolls bread rolls gherkins so I think I had pickled eggs as well and

pickled onions what other things did they have ribs as well these um burgers yeah different types of fish mushy peas that's another thing they used to sell a lot of effort goes into making mushy peas really pointless and I mean it doesn't mushy peas don't taste horrible they look and smell horrible but they don't taste it just it's like kermit snot it's just it just really it's the wrong color nothing should look like that it's about to go in your mouth there should be laws but it was quite popular considering

I lived in the south of the country because I know it's popular in other parts of the country and has been for a long time but 30 years ago when my boss of the chip shop first got mushy peas he was one of the first he I think he was the first southerner to ever not only sell mushy peas in a chip shop but I think he was the first person to ever even say the words mushy peas no one knew what they were we had to explain it to people

we put a big sign with a picture of this a luminous green gunk and people would say what's that and I'd say it's mushy peas can you not read the sign and sometimes they'd get annoyed and say that's rude we're just asking we didn't mean what's it called we can see it says mushy peas we just don't know what it means I said don't you watch coronation street again I was told I was rude what what what's it got to do with me what programs they watch well if you watch

coronation street you'll know that mushy peas is very standard in a chip shop it's a sort of normal thing and again I was told I was rude explaining to them about a tv program when I should be getting their food for them like okay all right just trying to help and after the first three weeks my boss banned me from even talking about mushy peas because apparently I was putting people off you know he thought well his idea was by the staff trying to sell the mushy peas to the customers

as a new thing a new exciting thing and you know the greatest creation for 400 years you know that was his mindset and I argued I said well maybe the greatest in 200 years but not 400 years and we'd argue and always ended up in a pillow fight and so that was fun but it detracted from the customers because we were supposed to be serving them and so there was a mop there anyway there was a mop and the floor my my job was it's like ongoing mopping you know continuously

ongoing because I would mop the floor in the kitchen and in the chip shop you know area there was a restaurant there as well but they had carpet so I didn't need to mop the carpet so I'd mop the kitchen at night I didn't also mop the kitchen in the afternoon when we shut down for three hours and again I would do that in the the chip shop part where we would fry the chips and also the other side of the counter where the customers would stand and bring in dog

poo into the place on their shoes because this is the 80s and every third person had dog poo on the bottoms of their shoes at one point I started to think that maybe the shoe shops were selling the shoes with dog poo on them already but I was told that was a really silly idea and I really should grow up but I just thought well I'm looking around and yeah there's a lot of dog poo and but really one in three people it seems like quite a high percentage and I

remember my boss saying to me can you just get on with the mopping please and I was okay fair enough so I'd mop after lunchtime finished the kitchen and all the other areas and then I'd mop again when the evening finished but the area between the kitchen and the chip shop bit would get wet because we'd have to go into the back where the chips were prepared and the fish and everything get some chips out of a bucket of water and then carry them into the chip shop area and water

would just be going everywhere now the initial fun of seeing people slip over wears out after a while especially when they have to go to hospital and you're left short staffed and you have to work harder so I kind of thought I'm gonna start mopping and I think sometimes we used to put paper down but it wasn't a very good system not very consistent if you trace traipse in water all over the place and then there was oil oil would get on the floor from the fryers and that would be

a hazard so luckily nothing nothing bad ever happened but I would try and keep the place nice and clean on the floor when at all possible because that way it's a less of a job if you do it if you if you keep it clean you haven't got to do much at the end of the day so that was the chip shop and I worked in a where did I work I worked at a canteen of a bakery and again same kind of thing I'd mop the floor at the end

of the day and it was fine I didn't mind I've always been okay with mops I always kind of got on with them because I've been using mops since I was a small child and it's quite a nice way to clean using a mop and some nice hot water with laxative or whatever they put in the water and just really I don't know it's kind of therapeutic a little bit a little bit just a nice relaxing end of the day just a little bit of mopping and while everyone else is

standing there with the coats on waiting for the five o'clock minute to hit the clock thing so they can leave I was never in that much of a hurry I like to wind down with a good mop and before that I forgot about this I was a cleaner so you should do a lot of mopping supermarkets, toilets in offices, kitchens in offices and so there's a fair bit of mopping there but because they were done so regularly they never really got that dirty apart from one place which was a supermarket

and it was a little bakery inside the supermarket you know one of the ones you go in and they do cook the stuff but it's not a big place but it's big enough and there's a counter at the front and when I was cleaning the supermarket in the morning they said to me or my manager said how would you like to clean the bakery tonight and I said why are you talking to me like that she said what I said well normally you talk a bit quicker you just suddenly start

talking very slowly like that and she said well you talk quite slowly so I figured you maybe was a bit bit behind you know a little bit slow so I thought I'll try and communicate with you in a way that you could understand and I said oh okay thanks I didn't realize she was being helpful and so I turned up I was given the keys to this this bakery now this floor and I know this because having worked in a bakery previous to that and worked in catering and you know

floors but I've I can't really say that I've worked with floors but I've worked on floors in catering and this floor was completely solid dough dried dough crust and it's really about an inch or two thick now the first thing I thought is once I clean this up when people get back to work they're going to think they've shrunk because they're all going to be two inches shorter from the ceiling but I never got to hear if that was true or not I spent about five hours in there trying to

clean it and I got a lot of it up and you know I did try I did my best with the time I had but eventually I had to eat and go to bed the next day I had a complaint that it wasn't done properly and I had to say to my manager listen manager that floor has not been cleaned in months and months and months if ever it was the worst floor I've ever seen and I've seen a few floors over the years it was solid solid solid solid solid

solid and I managed to hack through to get to the actual I don't know if they had either lino or slates probably slates most places back then had slates for um you know for floors in catering um but it was really I put so much work into that and at the end still got moaned at it's a bit annoying yeah I've had a few cleaning jobs over the years where I've cleaned I've mopped toilets I've mopped lots of toilets hundreds and hundreds of times I've mopped a toilet and trying to

think when other times I've had a mopping experience no that's about it yeah I'm sorry I thought I was really going to be able to think of lots and lots of wonderful stories involving mops but that's about all of my experience with mops I've shared with you so yeah that's it that's the end thank you for listening remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy remember to be gentle with yourself lots of love bye