(no music) SHOES | Mondays Boring Objects | LMBYTS #1410 | Jason Newland | 11th August 2025

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And this is Monday's Boring Objects. So while I try and think of a subject or an object to be boring about, what's the latest in my life? I had a really weird dream last night. And I woke up extra early.

Although I did go to bed extra early as well. I woke up and I thought, I'm just going to stay up. So I did.

And then this morning, because I think last night, I was working out what... was I? Yeah, I think it might be last night. I was working out what hypnosis recording to do next. And I decided on doing a recording for Bruxism, which is grinding teeth.

Usually when people are asleep. And this morning, I start doing a recording. I'm sitting here doing it.

20 minutes in. It's going pretty well, I feel. And I realize I've not pressed the record button.

And I go back to bed. I'm furious. Yes.

So what I did this afternoon, I gave it another attempt. At this time, I completed it. And I couldn't believe it was like nearly two hours long.

I think it's an hour and 55 minutes. So it took, it's a very thorough recording. And it took quite a long time to edit and to process and all that.

So I feel like it's sort of taken up most of the day really. That's okay. I'm quite pleased with it, kind of.

It's just, I mean, I'll ask for a favor here from anyone that's listening. If I do a recording, that, let's say hypnosis recording that fits in with something that you would use. For example, um, I did a lupus one the other day.

I've done, I've done a few different ones recently. And if you remember, or maybe share it on your Facebook page. And also if you're a member of a group on Facebook or some other social network sites, perhaps you could share that recording.

Because it's quite hard for me to share it myself, because a lot of groups class that as spam. If I start sharing my own stuff, no matter how good intentioned or maybe useful it might be. So you know, it's something to think about.

Maybe if it's possible, it would definitely help. Other than that, I've been out a couple of times today. Had a shower this morning.

Exciting stuff. It's been quite a warm day. I've got my window open and the soundproofing curtains are not completely covering the window.

So you might hear some background sounds a little bit. Although even with the soundproofing, there was still background sounds as well. Earlier, but for some reason, it was a relatively quiet day in the garden today, which was nice.

Normally, I have to wait for the winter for that to happen. Feeling quite tired, actually. I'm nearly ready for bed.

I mean, it's only half past seven. Oh, the sound has started. I'm not going to block it out.

I'm just going to leave it as it is because it's too warm to have the window closed. So yeah, that's it really. There's not not much left.

Not really else happened today. Oh, I got a letter from the doctor's surgery a few days ago, telling me I needed to make an appointment to get a mental health review, my anal mental health review. And if I didn't contact them, as basically if I didn't attend the appointment, my medication would be reduced to once a week.

So I'd have to collect it once a week instead of once a month, which seems a little bit heavy handed. I'm not quite sure why they were threatening that. I've never had a problem with them before.

And they had a telephone number to call. So I called the number thinking maybe it's a like a specialized number. But it wasn't.

It was just a doctor's surgery. And I got through and it said, click here for appointments. So I'll click the number for appointments.

And it said you have to go online. You can't do appointments on the phone anymore. We don't take appointments.

No. I'm like, okay. I mean, I suppose I am fairly internet savvy to a degree.

But I do think about people that aren't. And how this whole digital-only, internet-only kind of service does not, it doesn't serve a large, maybe not a big percentage, but it's still a large population of people in this country, millions. They can struggle with that.

All they want to do is make an appointment. Phone a number and make an appointment. But no, you got to go online and you got to do this and you got to do that.

I don't know. I just don't think it's going in the right direction to be fair. I'm just moaning for the sake of moaning.

Yeah, I don't really like it either. I want to be able to just phone up, speak to a human. I'm the same when it comes to shops as well.

I won't use the self-service unless I really have to. Although I don't, you know, I don't go out that often, but the previous couple of months I have been going to the hospital and using the shops in the hospital, like WH Smiths and Marks and Spencers and Costa Coffee. Those are the three places that I went into.

Costa Coffee, it's fine. You deal with a human, don't you? And just pay card or cash. WH Smiths have a self-service, but they also have a till with a human as well in that place.

So I do get the impression that the staff, it's a bit of an inconvenience for the staff member when you go and stand waiting to pay at the till. He's like, what are you doing that for? You can go and pay over there on the robot machine thing. I don't want to.

So yeah, that's, and also Marks and Spencer's in there. I think there's like four machines, maybe more actually. Yeah, they did have a little till, tiny little till area with a human and I queued up for that.

I just, yeah, I just, it's always been a little, just a slight annoyance to me right from the start, right from, you know, however many years, 20 years, maybe longer since self-service machines started out. And it was, you know, even though it's a novelty and I did try them out, but I just found them to be not very good. Either, what did I used to say a lot?

Oh, can you move your stuff out of the, the carrier bag section or I don't know.

So yeah, it's never really, not a big fan of the old self-service. McDonald's have self-service now, but you can also order at the till as well. I suppose the only self-service that I've ever really kind of embraced was Cashpoint Machines, because that's a self-service, isn't it? Self-service, banking, till, it's almost like a banking window self-service, isn't it? I mean, there was a time, I don't think they do it now, but they might still do it.

I don't know, I've not tried, but 30 odd years ago, you used to be able to put money into the machine. It's true, it wasn't just bringing, taking money out, you could put money in, money in, it's true. Yeah, it's been a while since that happened, for me anyway.

I mean, I've not attempted to do it, but maybe it's still available. I don't think it is, but it could be, I don't know, I'm not sure. I've been thinking about Uncle Sausages and whether or not to try and get up to Northern Ireland to, because basically, he's having his cremation here, near the end of the month, and then what's probably in about a week and a half, actually.

No, yeah, about two weeks, and his ashes are being sent to Northern Ireland, and there's going to be a ceremony there for him, with the Boys Brigade, which is, Uncle Sausages used to be in the Boys Brigade. I think he might have been in it as well, when he was a kid, but he also was in it as an adult, running it, helped to run it. He's one of the, I don't know, soldiers or officers or whatever.

So he's very passionate about that. And I did think about maybe trying to get up there for that, and then maybe moving from Northern Ireland into Ireland and visiting a couple of friends that live in Ireland, and also making a bit of a, is it a homage? I don't know, a visit to André, my original friend André, to his grave, who was my friend in the 90s.

He's who I named André, André after, you know, Little André the Ferret.

Because they used to call him No-Legs, that used to be his nickname at work, André, which is weird, because, I mean, he was trying to make out that he was short, but he was probably taller than me. He was probably 5'8", 5'9". He wasn't tall, but he was still, you know what I mean? It's like they called him, everyone had nicknames, except me, which makes me wonder what my nickname was, because no one told me.

Although in the canteen at one of my jobs, I used to get called Professor, because I was wearing glasses. It shows the level of, the level of where I was working. Although saying that, they were really nice, both the ladies that worked there, I did, I really liked them a lot, they were good.

They knew my name as well. They just decided Professor was a better name. Plus, I worked there for years and years, on and off.

I dreamt about being there the other day, being back there. I don't know if it was last night, or if it was the night before, but that was another weird dream. Went back to, yeah, trying to figure out where I lived, where, you know, maybe living in three different places.

I remember asking someone to knock on someone's door, a previous place I lived, and asked them if I still lived there or not. I couldn't remember if I still had some of my belongings there. Which makes me think, what should I talk about today? Have I talked about all the different places I've lived? I think I have.

I've talked about the jobs I've had. I've talked about girlfriends I've had. I've talked about, talked about my Nan, talked about stepmummies.

Talked about karate, talked about boxing, talked about taekwondo, martial arts, and bodybuilding last week. Yeah, that was the subject. I think it was last week, it was last week or the week before.

I talked about my book collection, although my book collection is now much sparser than it was. The main, pretty much the only books, well not the only books, but most of the books I've got now are just the hypnosis books. Because that's now what I'm focusing on.

As well as doing this to let me fall asleep, I'm going to continue doing this because this is the most fun. But I'm going to continue and really, I think, put more effort into making hypnosis recordings for issues, problems, medical conditions, things like that, that perhaps I haven't done before. So instead of just focusing on pain relief, relaxation or sleep, I'm going to, you know, I'm starting to broaden out.

Which I have done before. I mean, it's not the first time. I've done lots of different recordings over the years.

Lots, lots. But this is the first time I've really kind of started to expand on, expand something other than my waistline. Really, because I've done quite a few different recordings, very different types of recordings the last week or so.

I intend to continue with that. Because it takes a lot of work, a lot of energy, a lot of concentration. But I think at the end of it, it's worth it.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. At least I hope so. At least I hope so.

At least I hope so. I thought I'd say it three times. Okay, one more time.

At least I hope so. What other things? What haven't I talked about? Toenails. Can I do a whole hour about toenails? I mean, if I could, I probably could.

But it just seems wrong. Seems immoral. Underpants.

Yeah, perhaps I won't do that. Shoes. Shoes.

Okay, I'm going to talk about shoes. That's boring. That's boring.

I've never talked about shoes before. The different shoes I've had over the years. Wow.

It's quite hard to remember too far back because shoes is not something I've never really been a fan of shoes. I mean, they're handy. But I don't think I've ever generally bought a pair of shoes and been super excited about it.

Generally, I mean, maybe there has been a couple of times, but not really. I can't really remember shoes I had as a kid, like a little kid. But I'm pretty sure I had sandals.

And it probably wasn't the right thing to do. But they used to be called Jesus sandals in the UK, back in the 70s, like middle to late 70s. And they were just sandals with the toes, you could see the toes and whatever.

And so I had them. Not something I would have now. I mean, I think my toes do not, my toes are not for public viewing.

Yeah, I think not not for public scrutiny. And then flip flops. That's something I used to wear when I was a kid.

And I always like I'd always dislike them. So impractical. And flip flop is probably the best, the best name for anything ever.

Because they literally did go flip flop, flip flop. They sound silly. They felt silly, they looked silly.

I just didn't like them never liked flip flops. And although I do, I'm quite enjoying saying the word flip flop, though, for some reason. It's just as a little kid, I used to like running around and you can't run around with those things because they keep falling off.

Sandals, I found much more to my liking because they did stay on. Because I had straps and stuff, although I found them a little bit cumbersome. Which is a word I use a lot when I was seven years old.

Cumbersome, cumbersome. What's it? Was it dinner? Okay, Jason? Yeah, it was cumbersome. Thanks.

And what was your Christmas like? Very cumbersome. So yeah, I was flip flops, wellies, Wellington boots, used to have a pair of them, which is kind of needed in this country because of the rain and the weather and stuff. So I had wellies, which was a very popular thing for pretty much everyone to wear in the late 70s and in the 80s.

Don't see young people walking around in wellies anymore. But used to see a lot when I was a kid. When I say young people, I mean like teenagers and stuff.

I used to wear wellies when I was a teenager. To be fair, probably was the only one. I was never up to date with fashion.

I really wasn't. I was always so slow. I mean, I remember when I got my first BMX, I bought a BMX bike from the catalogue.

And I paid for it myself for my pocket money, and not my pocket money, for my newspaper round money. And I went next door to ask them to help me learn some tricks. Because they had BMX bikes.

But they were in, they were in line with fashion. So I was about two years too late. And they said, well, moved on from that.

We don't ride BMX bikes anymore. We don't do tricks anymore. Did you not notice? I said, yeah.

And I said, can you teach me some breakdancing moves on the lino? And they said, no. We haven't done that for probably five years, four years. Because there was little, there were certain things that were really popular in the 80s.

When I was at school, breakdancing was one. BMX bikes was another. Possibly skate, not skate.

Skateboarding possibly. But I think, I know definitely BMX bikes. And breakdancing.

The two things, I didn't even attempt breakdancing. Which is kind of weird, because I possibly may have been quite good at that. Because I was quite nimble as a kid.

But I didn't like the idea of people watching me. And it was always, the kids that did the breakdancing were always like a group of kids. The popular kids and the ones that were kind of in a gang.

Not a gang gang, but a gang bang gang. But you know, kind of the popular kids all getting together and stuff. And I was never part of any kind of popular group, popular gang.

I just had individual friends, who were almost like school colleagues really. So I knew different kids at school that I'd talk to. But I was only really like, had close friendship with a couple.

So, and my next door neighbours, a couple of kids there. One was a year younger than me. One was two years younger than me.

And they were both cool. But like literally they were cool. They was the cool kids.

Always had the latest clothing, the latest, they were just on the ball with that stuff. And they were really popular as well. And I wasn't in their friendship group.

Even though they went to school with me. I used to say hello to them. But they were my next door neighbours.

So I'd known them for, well from 79 to 86. So I'd known them for a long time, you know. So it's just almost like they were just there and we were there.

But I never really, I mean, I think I sometimes went around their house, but generally not much. I don't think so. I think I probably did.

Because I know that their dad and my dad were friends. Yeah. Because you know what they say, good neighbours become good friends.

What am I talking about? Shoes. Yeah. So Wellington boots.

I had those. I remember when I was about seven or eight. Yeah.

We moved into this council house, which then became my nan and granddad's house. After when we moved out, when I was about nine, just before I was nine, we moved into a different house. But we lived there for a year or so, year and a half maybe.

I liked that house. That was my favourite family time in that council house. And I was seven.

So it was the first time I'd ever had my own bedroom on my own. And it's the first time that we kind of had, the first time I had a family, really, since the age of six months or whatever. It was the first time like all the family were together.

Like my three brothers, me and my two brothers, and my dad, and you know, his new wife. But it was the first time I'd kind of been in a family unit. So, and I was the little baby of the family.

And I used to ride on my dad's shoulders. When he was walking, I'd be going giddy up, giddy up, stuff like that, slapping him on the head. Brilliant.

When he was in the car, I'd be on my stepmum's, I used to call her mum, and on her lap, cuddling up to her. It was absolutely brilliant. Honestly, it was great times for me.

And there was, there's a lot of nice memories from that time. I can remember some of them. But because it was a new build, there was still, there's still like houses being built, when we moved in.

And the ground hadn't settled properly. So, the garden outside, it wasn't a garden, it was just mud. And we all went into the mud, with our Wellington boots on, and I got stuck.

My dad had to pick me up out of the mud, out of the Wellington boots. My Wellington boots were still in there, they're probably still there now. Because I just literally could not move, I didn't have the strength, the physical strength, because the mud was so deep.

It was kind of like quicksand. It wasn't, but it was, it was like my version of the mud. Quicksand in my mind, after having seen, I mean, there was a lot of quicksand on movies and TV back then.

All the Tarzan movies, quicksand was in quite a lot of those. Some of the 70s, 80s, 70s, like TV shows, quicksand. Trying to say quicksand without whistling.

Quicksand. So that was fun. And I remember we got, there was a blizzard in the winter.

And I'm guessing that was probably 1978. And we got blocked in. We woke up, couldn't get out the back.

And it was literally just solid snow. You know, I was like six foot high, solid, just out the back. And then out the front, it was all solid.

It was like really up against it. But I think my dad, I think the door opened from the inside. I think.

The front door. I love that house. Because my nan and gran had stayed there.

My nan stayed there, you know, on her own from 91 all the way to about 2000 and, I don't know, 11. Maybe 2010, 2011, 2012. I don't know, it's one of them.

So she stayed there for a long time on her own. And it's weird because it had the same feeling. There was a feeling that that was, for me, that was the family home.

That was a place where I had my happiest memories as a kid, even though I wasn't there for long. But also, you know, throughout my life visiting my nan, you know, as an adult, as a kid, and as a teenager, and as an adult, all the way up to, you know, 10 years ago. And yes, it's quite a nice, fuzzy little feeling around my left knee.

I'm hoping it'll spread, but that's where it is at the moment. It's not, I don't know why I said that. That's weird, wasn't it? But the good thing about this is we got the day off though, because that's no, no school, no school.

Yes, result. And my dad cleared the front out, you know, he got rid of, he cleared the pathway out the front. Left, he left the back, because he just had to wait for it to kind of dissolve a little bit, because it was so full on.

So he just left that. He waited a while. And then, then I think we all kind of got involved and kind of moved it off, because I built an igloo.

I did, genuinely, I bought, I built an igloo. And did I say bought? I built an igloo. And I used a mixture of mud and ice as cement.

It's still there today. It was that good. Actually, I think I might have just been mud.

No, it was, there was definitely some ice involved. Because I actually, because I was quite specific. And I, I cut the ice into bits and made proper bricks and did it that way.

So yeah, I didn't mess around. I did it properly. I thought, and I spent hours and hours and hours doing this thing.

Very, very pleased with it. But I remember, the snow is so deep, it was, it was up to my waist, I think, in parts. But at the same time, I was eight years old.

And I was probably about three foot tall. So it probably wasn't that deep, apart from the bits that got blown into a heap. But it was deep enough for everything to be closed.

Brilliant day. That was a really good day. I'm not sure if it's the only day, it might be more than one.

But I remember my dad taking me and my two brothers behind the house. And there was this slope, which was just directly behind the house. And there was a motorway running across.

So this slope, him and my two brothers were kind of sliding on a sled. I just watched because I didn't want anything to do with it. I wasn't really much of a risk taker.

And I, like my oldest brother, he was four years older than me. So he was like 11, 12, or whatever, I don't know, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. So he was just having fun.

He wasn't really scared of stuff like that. My other brother, the young, the younger than him, so he was two years older than me. He wasn't scared of nothing ever.

You know, he'd have jumped out of a plane with a parachute at that age, it wouldn't have scared him. He just fearless. I was a little bit different.

I just, for me, I couldn't see the point in sliding down on a sled made of plastic, heading towards a fence. Like, how's it going to stop? How am I going to stop this thing? And my two brothers at the bottom saying, we'll stop you. Like, yeah, okay.

Yeah, you know, I'd spent eight years of my life with these two blokes, these two older lads. I knew not to trust them. By then say that they'd stopped me from going headfirst into the fence meant that I was probably going to end up going headfirst into the fence.

And if I didn't reach the fence, they'd probably push me into the fence. So yeah, because I was the youngest, I got a bit of the brunt of that at that time. But you know what? Here's something that is an acknowledgement that we won't get to the ears that it's needed.

I'll say it out loud anyway. My oldest brother, four years older than me, for a period of my life, he was like a father figure, however ridiculous that might sound. So when I was really little, he used to be put in charge of looking after me and my other brother.

So let's say I was four, my other brother was six, and my oldest brother was eight. We'd be left for days. And my brother would be looking after us, make sure that we ate, make sure we were safe.

He was eight years old. I saw him as an adult. And also the fact that he was always much, much taller than me.

Like I know he's four years older, but he's like six, four or something. And I'm five, eight. I wasn't then.

I'd have loved to have been five, eight when I was four years old. Well, I'd be an absolute giant by now. Anyway, yeah, so I didn't appreciate him at that time.

And I don't think it's ever been appreciated what he did, how much was put on his little shoulders, this eight-year-old looking after two younger brothers for long periods of time on his own. It's, yeah, it's weird. So he was, even when I was in the children's home, he was the father figure even then.

I listened to him, what he said when, you know, I did what he told me. And then when we all moved to live with my dad, so he was 11 at this point, when I was seven. My other brother was nine.

My oldest brother was 11. He went from being in charge to being a little kid. And I don't think he knew how to handle being a little kid, because he'd never been a little kid before.

Well, not for a long, long time. Not since he was four or five. Yeah, four, four and a half, five, six, I don't know, six, he was six.

So he'd had six years or five years of being like an adult. And then suddenly he was a kid. So I think that was a bit of a bit of a shock to his system.

Yeah. Anyway, it's not really got anything to do with shoes, is it just a bit of personal reflection, I guess. I'm what I used to have.

See, I didn't really Okay, I did. I did get a choice of what shoes I had when I was at school. But it really was a case of these or these.

You know, I had to every year before I started the new year, I'd go and get some new shoes, new school uniform. And because I'd normally would have grown a little bit. Sometimes, if I'd grown a bit, you know, if my feet had grown a bit too much, or if the shoes are falling apart.

Yeah, I might get some new shoes halfway through the year. So I went, I remember, I think it was in the fourth year of high school, maybe the third year. And I bought these shoes, and I thought it would be a good idea to buy ones with, okay, not a high heel.

They weren't high heel shoes. But I had a heel on them. Or they had a fair bit of sponge at the bottom of them, which added a good inch to me.

And as we all know, an inch is a hell of a lot. Now, I was pleased with these shoes. But they were quite big.

They were quite bulky. They were a little bit Herman Munster-y. And I thought, I just walk into school, I mean, it's like, I don't know how many hundreds of kids were in that school.

Maybe, maybe even 1000. I don't know. However many kids were in that school, at least 500, possibly maybe more.

Maybe 1000. I don't know. Why would anyone take any notice of my shoes, was my kind of theory.

I mean, in my experience, I've found that people have a tendency of focusing on the wrong thing. You know, on the wrong thing. So going to school thinking, not really thinking anything of it.

Maybe people might notice that I've grown an extra inch overnight. It's possible. But no.

It is like within minutes of me walking into the classroom. My new nickname was Beetle Crushers. Because of my, my shoes, because they're so big.

I was wearing Beetle Crushers. That's what they were saying. That's my new name, Beetle Crushers.

So I had a few nicknames at school, New Zealand Lamb, Beetle Crushers, Specky, when I got my glasses. Very original. The other thing, I've talked about this before, but this was during Grain Chill.

There was an event where this lady, this girl kept saying, Roland, Roland, I care about you, Roland. Roland was one of the characters and this girl was something in love with him or something. I care about you, Roland.

And there was this particular episode that she kept saying it. And the next day, I come into school. And all I got all day was, New Land, New Land, I care about you, New Land.

I'm not even joking. And went on and on and on. It's sometimes it got so bad, I just had to urinate myself just so they start giving me different names.

Anyway, so I had various pairs of trainers. If you might live in a country where they're wrongly called sneakers, but trainers is the correct word. I never understood why they're called sneakers.

Because you can sneak around in them without anyone hearing you. That's a bit dodgy, isn't it? That's a bit, that's a bit wrong. It's a bit criminal.

Criminal. So I used to wear trainers, wore football boots at school, you know, for football. I had those, had trainers for the other stuff I did.

I used to Oh, wow. Talking about boots, or talking about food, boots, not boobs, boots, or footwear, really. When I was in the Sea Cadets, I had these boots.

And part of the if you don't, if you know anything about the Sea Cadets, or the Army Cadets, or probably the Royal Air Force Cadets, there used to be a big thing about making the fronts of the boots really shiny, like almost like mirrors. And I used to do this with my brother because he was in the What was he in? He was in the RAF, he was in the Air Cadets, not the RAF Cadets, the Air Cadets.

So my older brother was in the Air Cadets.

I was in the Army, I was in the Navy Sea Cadets, blimey. So I was he was in the Air Cadets, I was in the Sea Cadets. Why don't they just call them the RAF Cadets and the Navy Cadets? I don't know.

So anyway, we used to do our boots together. And part of the thing was to put polish on, melt the polish with a lighter, and then have a little bowl with some water in and a cloth and then just basically do circles in it. We'd spend hours doing that.

What a waste of time. It really was. And then I get to the Sea Cadets on a Tuesday or Thursday night, and I'd do it and sometimes the one of the officers would say, Oh, that's not done good enough.

And they'd literally stand on my shoe and I'd spent maybe four hours shining them. Sometimes other cadets would do it, just as a joke. Yeah, it didn't go down well with me.

But I managed to do it. I managed to sort of, I even got the smell is kind of stuck in my head. That smell of polish and like burning polish and damp cloth and yeah, it was, there's a degree of satisfaction doing it.

But it's also a percentage of absolute pointlessness doing it as well. So it's, I guess back then, I didn't realize how valuable time was. But it is, I mean, I don't think it taught me anything.

You know, I think it's supposed to teach discipline, self-respect, stuff like that. And I don't have any of that, or any of that stuff. I've never had any self-respect or pride.

Nah, hasn't really, hasn't really raised its head. My voice is very croaky. It's probably because I spent two hours making a recording earlier.

Also because I'm sitting here with my neck crunched over. Hello Vinnie, sorry, it's just you. Did I wake you up? And so that's another bit of footwear that I probably spent the most amount of time doing.

Vinnie's looking at me like, oh, what are you doing, Daddy? What are you doing? And then when I left school, he keeps looking back at me. What is it? You want me to just tickle your nose? Do you want me to tickle your nose? Do you like that? Do you like that? Oh, okay. Just stroking his nose, he's liking that.

So when I left school, I suddenly had a bit more options in a sense of I was getting paid. I had money coming in. However, I went between wearing absolute grotty clothes while I was working, including horrible trainers that were wearing away, and they were getting wet every time I was working in them.

Then he just did a little growl at me. But during that period, when I first started working there, I was buying myself some nice clothes to wear when I wasn't at work. And because one of the, Justin his name was, he was still at school.

So he was like a year younger than me. Yeah, he was still at school. And he was part time working in a chip shop.

And he took me shopping because he was super fashionable. A bit like my next door neighbors were as well. He was like he had the thing at the time was baggy trousers and everything about him was immaculate, his haircut, all his clothing, he was so like, that was his thing.

So he kind of tried to tidy me up a little bit. And it took to him, he took me to a couple of his secret shops that he went to. I mean, they weren't secret, but they were places that were a little bit off the off the beaten track, as it were, in a different town.

And so instead of going to next or to some of the more frank, you know, the, the shops in the town I was living, he took me to a different place where you'd get something different. So I got these boots from this shop. And they were like cowboy, cowboy boots is true.

And they clicked when I walked. They clicked when I walked and I loved them. I loved my boots.

At this time, yeah, I was still 15. At this point, I think yeah, I would have been still 15. And I loved my boots.

This is probably the summertime. And I was just clicking along. And I was wearing nice clothes.

But then when I went to work, I put on these horrible jeans that were just caked in batter. And when I say batter, I mean, like fish and chip batter. And I just stunk, stunk of fish and all kinds of stuff.

Because I was, I mean, if I was, if I was, if I, you know, if I did a do it again, a do over, I do things differently. But would I because I'd be that person again, wouldn't I? I wouldn't be me. I definitely wouldn't do that again.

Because I didn't do my feet any favours wearing those old, smelly trainers that were falling apart, and they were wet all day long. And then I think I might have wore wellington boots part of it as well. But my feet was still getting wet while I was going in and out of the kitchen and stuff.

He's a bit restless. So I like them boots though, they were nice. And then 19.

I had a funeral to go to in 1987. I think it was. And I bought some clothes.

And I bought some, like a suit, I bought some new shoes. And then during the late 80s, I used to buy I think most of my clothes that I got was from like Next or Marks and Spencers, you know, places like that, just B&H or Debenhams. So I didn't spend much money on clothes because when I did buy something, it lasted a long time.

So let's say I spent 10 pounds on a pair of 501 jeans. You know, that'd be the only pair I'd buy for a year, maybe. I didn't have, I never had a small amount of clothes.

I still do really. It's just the way that because I've, I've been almost like a bit of a traveler. You know, moving from place to place.

We know what traveling is. I know what I mean is not really traveling. I mean, as I've traveled a few distances, but it's just apart from the last 10 years, I've kind of been on the move a lot.

And I think I've moved about 50 times since I left school, something silly like that. So I realized that the more stuff I had, the harder it was to move. The more I had to carry, the more I had to, you know, it just, that's why for a lot of the time, I just kept things to a minimum.

And then I don't remember what kind of shoes I had in the late 80s. I really don't remember. Or early 90s.

I kind of can't remember. This is terrible. I can't remember any shoes I had throughout a whole decade.

It was that unimportant to me. But in the late 90s, I probably had some nice shoes. Not like super nice, but you know, pleasant.

Okay. Okay. Shoes.

I mean, 2000s, I started wearing proper shoes for for working in offices. So I'd have black shoes, just standard, boring office shoes. So I'd have that throughout the 2000s.

And in 2004, I went through a period when I was wearing quite nice clothes. No, not 2004 to maybe 2004, but 2005 2006. Definitely.

I was wearing a lot of white stuff. Don't ask me why, but I was wearing white trousers, white tops. I was wearing white shoes.

And I was shaving my head. So I I don't know what I look like. But it Yeah, it was just a little think I went through and I had generally during that period.

Probably throughout the whole of the 2000s. My shoes were quite nice. I generally had decent shoes.

And if I needed new ones, I just bought them. So it's just not really a big issue. And I always had at least one, like two sets of shoes, one for work and one for at home, maybe two for at home, depending on what you know, it's all casuals.

Then in 2007, I was wearing hush puppies. And the reason I liked hush puppies because you could just put them on. And they didn't slip, they didn't cause blisters.

No, they just the ones that I got. Perfect. Absolutely love them.

And I think I might have got them I think about 2007. And I've got a new pair nearly every year, exactly the same pair for about four years in a row. And the shop I was getting them from stopped doing them.

So I had to change over to something else. By this time, I wasn't needing I didn't need to wear anything in an office because I was like self employed counselling, haven't been to university. So I didn't need to wear black shoes and stuff like that.

Or, you know, office attire. I still I was smart, but didn't necessarily need to wear although I possibly did wear shoes. And I remember bought some shoes for my nan's goodbye event.

And I got a blister, I still got the shoes now 10 years later, and I got such bad blisters that day. It was ridiculous. They were just too tight.

I mean, they weren't too tight in the feet, they were just too tight in the heel. I've still got them. I think, unless I chucked them away.

And then the last few years or last 10 years, I suppose. I just, I was getting I like to get stretch what they call stretchers. Stretchers, that's not the right word, is it? Sketches.

I was buying sketches for the last few years. And also a few years ago, I bought these boots that were kind of really big, really nice boots. They're perfect for when it's raining or anything like that.

I mean, mountaineering really could I wear them for probably or hill walking. But I don't wear them very often. I mean, nowadays, I pretty well wear these.

I got some new shoes recently. Well, a few months ago, probably, because my other ones had holes in them. And they're just slip ons, casual.

They seem to do the job. But there are bits, they're a bit big for me. Although I don't wear any socks.

So if I wore socks, I'd probably fit a bit better. So I couldn't really go running. Not that I would go running, but I couldn't, I couldn't run in them because it would be, yeah, they'd fall off, they'd slip.

But yeah, I'd lose them in the hedge or something. I did have some trainers, but I don't know if I've still got them. I might chuck them away.

I can't remember. All footwear, I tell you, I've got. When I had Andre, I've not talked about all the slippers I've had, have I? That'll be a different story.

But when I moved in here, I had slippers. And Andre destroyed two pairs of my slippers. One, one after another.

Just kept biting them and pulling them when I was wearing them. And, you know, when I wasn't around, he'd do all kinds of things to them. So I bought Crocs, some blue Crocs.

And Andre, he loved them as well, because he could pull on them, bite them, but he couldn't, you know, in some ways, he probably liked them just as much. I mean, he still had my old slippers to do what he wanted to do with them. And let's just, let's not go into that, but he did exactly what he wanted.

But the Crocs kind of, you know, they were quite useful. And then I think the, they broke, they started falling apart. And I ordered some more Crocs.

But this time, I thought it'd be funny, I'd get some pink ones. Just thought it'd make my friend laugh. So yeah, I've got some pink Crocs, and that's what I wear now.

You might think, well, why would it make any difference what colour they are? But people notice and people do comment. I think it's because they make me look so, so super sexy, I think, must be what it is. Yeah, I think we're up to date.

I think that's all my bearing in mind, I've been around for so long. There's going to be so many pairs of shoes that I've forgotten all about. But because of my, I want to say lack of fashion, but that's the correct term.

I don't, I've never really put a lot of energy into shoes. Although, perhaps I would have been better off if I had. It just never really interested me.

And I didn't know, like, why would anyone look at my shoes? But I know sometimes people do look at people's shoes. I've just never looked at anyone's shoes. I don't see any relevance.

Yeah. So that's me. That's me.

So, shoes. This is my, that's my boring subject of the day. And I hope it was mildly, mildly boring.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself because you do deserve to be happy. Be gentle with yourself.

You deserve to feel safe. Lots of love. Bye.