#48 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (17th October 2018)

Hello, hello. Welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. And as you can see, I'm... well you can't see I'm sitting in a chair but you can see that I'm not sitting in my big black reclinable chair.

Unless of course I had some kind of special effects going on. But what would be the point of that? So there you go. I'm in a chair.

I'm not standing up. I could be standing up. There'd be no way of knowing, would there? I suppose.

But I don't think it'd be very comfortable to stand up for an hour or however long it takes to get this thing done. So as you can see if you're watching the video, I've got a bit more of a setup going on. I've got two microphones.

I've got them connected to the recording studio, digital recording studio, and I'm using my iPhone to record, like to make the video. A lot of work just getting it all connected and testing it. I just, I wasn't too pleased with the sound quality on yesterday's session.

So I'm trying to improve the sound. So hopefully this will do it. I'm hoping.

So let's have a little drink of Coca-Cola. Of course, that wouldn't be something that you drink before going to sleep because it's not really a, it's not really Horlicks. Not Horlicks-y, is it really, Coke? So only watch this video or listen to this MP3 when you can safely close your eyes.

And that's my website. I know it isn't. Oh, what does that say? Jason Newland, hypnosis.

Yeah. Self-publicity. So the whole point really is for these particular sessions, let me bore you to sleep, is that I just talk at you.

I just talk for however long the session lasts. Sometimes it's 42 minutes. Sometimes it's 47 minutes.

I've gone 52 minutes once, I think. I've done 57, 58. I've even gone over an hour.

So an hour and two minutes. I don't usually go much over the hour. I could, I suppose.

But it's other things to do. I could, I suppose, just sit here and talk for five hours. But first of all, the video camera, I wouldn't be able to, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't be able to film for that long.

I'm not sure if I'd be able to record for that long either. So I'd probably end up just talking for five hours and then realize it cut off at two and a half hours or something. So, and I've made lots of recordings over the years where I really felt that it was a good recording.

Maybe it wasn't on video. Maybe it was on a, you know, digital recorder or microphone, or maybe the microphone was plugged into, it was a USB one. So it's plugged into, you know, Audacity.

So it's recording through Audacity or some other recording software. And then at the end of it, I realized that I forgot to press record. And I've been talking for an hour or 40 minutes or 30 minutes, 20 minutes, but even so it's still quite a long time.

And it's always those little bits of gold, those bits of, oh, oh, you know, really just, if only I could capture that magic every time and, and then, then I've lost it. I've lost the recording and maybe it does record, but then the laptop freezes and I lose the recording. Or other times I've recorded, made videos and then I end up losing the video because the phone doesn't work properly.

It doesn't transfer it properly. Same thing happened with the video camera. So yeah, so I've probably, over the years, probably a good 30 or 40, maybe 50 sessions I've lost due to malfunction of some kind, as well as probably another hundred plus, maybe 200 even that I've lost due to laptops breaking and I just haven't lost or the podcast closing down without telling me.

That happened quite a while ago. Podcast, it was, I haven't started yet, by the way, this is, this is me being interesting. And I had this, was it pod, podcast.com, pod, it was something anyway.

And I used it and it was back in, so I remember it was before I started doing my university course. And I started that in, I think it was the beginning of October, 2007. So I already had this podcast for about a year or two and I'd reached a hundred thousand listeners or downloads, plays, whatever.

And then one day I went on there to check the stats because I was getting, at some point I was getting like thousands and thousands every day, just plays, it was really growing. And they deleted nearly like half of my recordings to make space because it was a free service and they didn't offer any kind of paid service. And then eventually they just deleted everything.

They closed down. Couldn't believe it. I've got over it now.

It's a long time ago, but it's for the good nine years. So I'm not sure if I already said, only listener watch this when you can safely close your eyes because it is a let me boy to sleep. And it is, you know, it's aimed at that, although I'm not, don't necessarily mention sleep.

Although sometimes I will mention sleep. It's just depends on how, you know, what words come out of my mouth really. But the aim is just to, I'll give the description of, a good description.

I remember years and years ago, you know, if you've been to, you've been out the night before and then you're in school or college or you're at work and you really just, whether, whether you'd been drinking the night before, whether you just haven't had enough sleep, whatever the reason, or maybe you just overdid things. I mean, I know that if I went out now and it's about just gone nine o'clock in the evening, if I was to go out and dance for an hour in the garden or in the supermarket or wherever and then come, came home, I would be tired because it's something I'm not used to doing.

But regardless of what it is you were doing, maybe it was, my memory is once I was at a company do and I worked for this insurance company and we all went out a big, like a summer, not brolly, summer ball, is it a ball? Yeah, all I sort of had dressed up in tuxedos and such things, like bow ties.

And I never, I've done two, two of those, been to two balls, two balls. Both, both of, both of my balls have been at insurance companies. Both my balls have been at two different insurance companies.

And yeah, I think the other one was also kind of just after the summer, probably about September time. But anyway, I remember being there, going back to work the next day and I had sunglasses on indoors in the office. The general rules didn't really apply that day, as long as you didn't swear at a customer or poo on the desk, you know, I mean, pretty much everything else was okay.

It's just, it's a case of just getting through the day because everyone else was also in the same kind of boat. And yeah, well, we used to, I used to work on a boat and it's that feeling of trying to keep your eyes open, but you really just struggling against it. And the more you try, the harder it is.

The more you try to stay awake, the harder it becomes, the harder it feels. And the more you just want to close your eyes and just drift away. And just keep trying to come back to trying to stay awake, but it's just becoming harder and harder.

And it can be a bit like that sometimes if you're in a relationship and the other person wants to talk, they really want to talk about something that's just not quite as interesting to you as maybe is to them. And it might be late at night, maybe. And you're trying to stay awake and you're using all the techniques to try to restrain those yawns.

One that I found was by pushing your tongue against the top of your mouth like that. So they don't know that you're trying to stop a yawn. The other thing is, is it putting your finger in some water, some warm water? No, that's a different thing.

Yeah, it's not that. But there's different ways. Some people are really good at holding in yawns.

I don't even try. Unfortunate during job interviews. So the point is, if you, in that experience, that situation, and we've all had them, it could be any number of things, times when you just want to just lay down.

You just don't want to listen. And it's this person like me, I'm talking about nothing and I'm trying to grab your attention and you really don't want to listen because it's just pointless. There is no point at all to listening to this.

It's not going to change the world. You're not going to wake up in the morning and suddenly find out that you got an extra £100,000 in your bank account by listening to me. It'd be worth listening to me then.

Because boring though, the whole point is the boredom, this boring monologue of nothing. And that mindset of trying to stay awake, but then you know that you can't. It's not that the person talking to you is upsetting you or saying anything bad.

It's just, you know, we've got that inbuilt thing in our society where perhaps we're perhaps polite, which I think is quite a nice thing. Where you don't just say, sorry, you're boring me. Goodbye.

It's not something, and it's only, I've only been said, people have said that to me a few times over the years. So it hasn't happened very often, four or five times a week, not very often. So I can be that for you.

I can be that tedious, boring, pointless chitter chatter that just sends you into just, it's like your brain just switches off. And the benefit is that while I'm yabbering on and on and on and on and on, that and on, you can notice that your focus has changed. And you just focus in on me and my voice and wondering, it's that kind of paradox of what is this? Whoa.

So you're making these videos and audios, MP3s, and you're being boring. And it's kind of a weird thing because my way of being boring is by being talking about things that interest me and embracing the boringness of some boredom. I own, I am the president of Bordonia.

I love this such a place. So, and also I should say that those of you that have only ever listened to me in the past, because I've made quite a few of these, let me bore you to sleep sessions. And most of them are just MP3s available on Spotify or iTunes or SoundCloud or my website, jasonnewland.com. But you've got, you might be looking at me for the first time.

You might be seeing a video of me for the first time on YouTube or on my website, or you might be watching it on Facebook or Twitter or somewhere like that. And I understand that it may take a while to get over the novelty of my face. You know, it's a novelty, it's a novelty factor.

But then if you're going to close your eyes anyway, you don't need to look at the video. But then if you decide to, maybe you need to just have something to laugh at, you can just open your eyes, look at me, have a little giggle, and then go close your eyes again. And it's all good.

Everyone wins. It's all good. Except me, really.

But, so the whole point is for me just to talk. And it's not really to you, it is more at you. It is a monologue, it is no two way thing.

It's just me talking to me, really. But I am talking to you. But it does, if you were sitting there, you'd be, and there'd be a communication backwards, even if it was just a yawn.

Or a look of, you know, it could be any look, you can fill in the gap there, it could be a look of astonishment, could be a look of who farted, it could be any kind of look on your mind, on your mind, in your mind, on your face, on your face, wherever. And so that's really what this is. And I don't really want to do an introduction to every single video and mp3 that I do, because I've just spent the last 20 minutes introducing this.

And, you know, before starting, so I suppose I should start, I should stop being so interesting and get down to being boring now. So just to let you know, not everything I say is true. Not everything I say is false.

Not everything I say is made up. I just say stuff. And that's it.

Nothing to be read into. It's just stuff. I might talk about experiences of my life.

And the only time I really remember things is when I start talking about things. And then a memory will jump up and say, hey Jay, what about me? Tell them about me. I'm a memory worth mentioning.

And I do. And then the memory says, could have told the story with a bit more energy, a bit more enthusiasm. I saw something on the news earlier.

And it was, they were interviewing teachers because they're trying to get young people, children, students, to get into STEM subjects like science, science subjects. And some, one of the teachers or tutors was being interviewed by the news interviewer, reader, whoever. And he said, what do you look for in a student for, you know, to come into doing a science course? And the teacher said, we look for someone that's enthusiastic.

And that was it. And that, we look for someone that's enthusiastic. Now I didn't expect him to be spinning on his head and, you know, sort of jumping around and dancing on top of a piano or anything, but it was kind of the way he said enthusiastic.

It just seems to be the opposite to the word. And I can't really do examples or I suppose I'm really excited about that. Yeah.

That's brilliant news. Oh, I'm really, really pleased for you. Hope it all works out.

You know, maybe it's the lack of energy into the voice maybe, but you know, I can't, you know, this is how I kind of talk anyway. Sometimes I do, I get a little bit excited sometimes. Not excited enough or enthusiastic enough to take up science, but never really been into science.

I like using, I like using science. I like to, you know, things that have been created through science. For example, everything really, I suppose everything we use, televisions, the internet, it's all been created by sort of science or scientific engineers or, it's all kind of comes from a scientific, little scientific volcano, you know.

So it's, I like using, but I'm not really, I'm really interested in creating scientific things. In the same way, I like to, I like to eat breakfast cereals, but I don't want to work on a farm. You know, it's, I'd rather just open the packet up and pour it into the bowl and, you know, just pour some milk in.

I don't want to, I don't want to have to like sow crops and milk cows just to have a bowl of breakfast cereal, bowl of cornflakes or Weeabix. Because sometimes I like to eat a Weeabix. There was a time years ago when I, because I used to have such a small amount of money and not that I'm not exactly rich now, but I used to really live on the bread line as well as working.

So sometimes I'd just have breakfast cereal because I didn't have money for food, but I'd have like breakfast cereal. So I'd, I'd work and I'd come home and I'd have about five or six Weeabix with milk and way, way, way too much sugar for anybody of any size, of any age, of any fitness. It should not have that much sugar.

I was, it was too much sugar, but I loved it. And I used to do that. Didn't always make the best decisions when it came to food when I was younger.

Yeah, sometimes I'd go and buy an ice, buy ice cream. Viennetta ice cream used to be one of my favourites and you can still buy it. I've got, I've got a log, a log, but it's a block of Viennetta in my freezer.

I might have some actually tonight, not instead of my dinner, like I used to, but as well as, you know, maybe as a dessert afterwards. And you know, some people say, live, live life on the edge, do something, do something different, be creative. Have your dessert before you eat.

I just, the two things kind of stopped me from doing that is one is once I've had my dessert, I'm not kind of hungry, you know, anymore for like normal food. Kind of, you know, and the other time is, the other thing is, I think a dessert, especially when I was younger, it used to be a reward for eating that other stuff that I had to eat. It was a reward.

If you eat this on this plate, these vegetables and this stuff, if you eat that, consume that, keep your mind on the goal, keep your mind on the jelly and ice cream that you're going to have afterwards. But you have to consume that first. So it's, it is, it's like, okay, you got to run around a field for five hours.

But if you do that, you'll be able to sit down in a chair in the warm. You know, you get a reward for your suffering. So that's, that's why perhaps that's why once I left school, I kind of gravitated towards having dessert instead of eating.

Not all the time, but sometimes. But I don't do that anymore. I sometimes do that.

I don't generally do that. But sometimes, you know, it's not like a constantly, always. I wish there was a way of doing these microphones so they were, I mean, if I've got them any closer, they'd be earmuffs.

You know, they're really quite close. There's that much difference. I mean, that's what, it's got to be about 15 inches.

So it's like not a lot of, you know, I hope the sound comes out good though. It should do. I haven't banged into any of the microphones.

Although there is, there are some sounds, a car going on outside, but that's all right. I don't know how much of that will be picked up because I was over the other side of the room and I was clicking my fingers trying to get rid of a bogey that had dried on there. No, I wasn't.

I clicked my fingers and to see whether or not it was measuring the sound on the digital recorder. And it wasn't much because I wasn't anywhere near the microphones. So now I'm here, I'm hoping that it is registering and it's picking it up and it'll be fine.

But hopefully it's not taking any notice of other sounds that are maybe occurring elsewhere within the vicinity, vicinity, divinity area. Yeah. Yeah.

That's it. So I wasn't sure what I'll talk about today, but I thought maybe I'll talk about my experiences with glasses. So when I was young, Ger, everything's when I was younger and I started this recording when I was younger, but when I was young, I didn't wear glasses.

Didn't wear glasses for probably the first 15 years of my life. Didn't need them. Didn't wear them.

I didn't wear them because I didn't need them. And no one else in my family, apart from my grandmother, wore glasses. I don't think my granddad ever wore glasses, unless he wore them when he read the paper.

I have a little memory that he did because my granddad on a Sunday, I only used to see it on a Sunday. Might've done it during the week as well, but on a Sunday, he used to buy the Sunday newspaper. I think, in fact, he used to go to the news agents every day and get a paper.

And he was very fit, very, he was ex-army and he kept his fitness up all through his life. And he used to walk, I'm not saying walking to news agents to buy a paper is a sign of great fitness, but he did it even in sort of elderly age, elder age, he did it. And he was, yeah, he was very fit.

And you have to be on a Sunday, isn't it? Because the newspapers are quite big. The amount of supplements by that, I don't mean nutritional supplements like vitamin C or vitamin A or vitamin B or vitamin D, vitamin E. Is there a vitamin F? Is there a vitamin G? Vitamin H? Vitamin I? You've got iron. That's not a vitamin I, is it? It's not a vitamin, is it? It's a mineral, isn't it? A mineral.

J, vitamin J. Juice, that's, but juice then would have possibly vitamin C in it, but then it depends what kind of juice, I suppose. Juice. K, vitamin K. Vitamin L. What is the K? I forget what it is.

There's like a seaweed that starts kelp. I said kelp. So I used to take kelp years ago when I was about 16.

I was into going to the gym. I've been doing weights and going to the gym for a couple of years at that point. And I, no matter what I did, I always stayed really slim and really just light.

I wasn't big at all. I was muscly, but I wasn't big. And I just wanted to be big and a bodybuilder kind of, and I just couldn't, no matter how much I ate or how much I trained, it didn't make any difference.

It was like there was just, it wouldn't, I just wouldn't grow. I couldn't get any bigger. And clearly I grew out of that and I did get bigger, but at that time I couldn't.

And I used to be, I got this, because I used to read bodybuilder magazines. There's one called Flex that I used to read. I used to read that at school.

And there was another one called, I think it might've just been called Bodybuilding. But Flex was the big, the big magazine, because that was the one that used to cover the Mr. Olympias and the Miss Olympias and the Mr. and Mrs. Universes. And at the time, and there was, because I was reading it in 1986, maybe the year before as well, but that was, yeah, maybe 1985.

And I'd read it during maths because I didn't do any work in a maths class. I just used to read my magazine and I'd be left alone really. And I remember there used to be a, the bodybuilders at the time, there was one called Mike Platz and that's P-L-A-T-Z, I think.

And he was blonde and he was absolutely huge, big bodybuilder. And his thighs were, he had the biggest thighs, muscles in his thighs out of any bodybuilder pretty much that had ever been around at that point. And I remember him and he used to smile and he looked like a chipmunk because he looked like he'd had a little squirrel, like he'd got, his cheeks were full of nuts, you know, that he'd like squirreled away and he was hiding them.

But smiling as if to say, what nuts? I've not seen any nuts. Have you? I don't know what you're talking about. I wish I had.

I'd love to have some nuts. Love nuts, but I don't have any. I wish I did.

I need to keep looking, mate. We tried him over there. You see him inside his shorts.

I think they might be inside his pants. And at that point, Arnold was no longer a bodybuilder. He wasn't a bodybuilder anymore.

He was a movie star. He'd done the Terminator and all that stuff, I think. Like so.

So I did, I was reading that, there's another person and it's a Mr. Olympia, probably 1985. And Albert Beckles, he came something like third or maybe even second. And he was in his sixties or he might've been 59.

He might've been 58, 50, maybe 55. I'm sure he was just under 60. But I suppose some people would class 55 as being under 60.

I mean, technically 12 is under 60, but he wasn't 12. I imagine each of his arms were about 12 stone. But he was big and he was a bit of a star because of his age.

He was the oldest. Oldest or eldest? I suppose you could use both of those words, couldn't you? You could use oldest and eldest. The eldest, the oldest.

But then if you use the word elder, like an elder statesman, you don't use older statesman. Elder seems to be a bit more like reverential or respectful maybe. But he smiled.

All the bodybuilders, when they're on the podium and on the stage, flexing their muscles and stuff. And it was only pictures. I mean, there was no internet back then.

And so it was a magazine, like the old fashioned. It used to be on paper. For those that haven't seen a magazine, maybe they've only ever sort of been on the internet.

It was like an internet page, but you physically turned it with your finger. And it was kind of like a book, but bigger in size, but not as many pages, depending, of course, on how big the book was. I would say the average amount of pages in Flex, and this is a guess, probably would be probably about 70 pages, maybe 75, maybe 60.

I think they were quite, I mean, it wasn't like, it wasn't war and peace. It wasn't big, massive. You know, and the pages weren't thick.

They were glossy. Glossy, yeah, pretty glossy, because the pictures were really good pictures. And it was, it wasn't just pictures of bodybuilders posing.

It was also, it was interviews with bodybuilders. There's also articles on training, how to get your biceps, you know, bodybuilder biceps and how to bodybuild your thighs and how to build the muscles bigger. And there was articles on how to train your shoulders, to make your shoulders more muscular.

There was articles on, a lot of articles on your back, how to make your back more muscular, the whole of the back, not just, not just the top of the back, but also the middle of the back, the lower back. And there's that bit that goes, where it's in the back, really, basically, is there's a certain pose that some bodybuilder, I probably still do it, I don't know, but I've not watched a bodybuilding competition since 19, yeah, probably about 1985, or whenever Pumping Iron came out. That's the early 80s, I think.

And that was with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lucio Rigno. And they did this, they made a film following them as, I think it was the 19, is it 1980 or 1981, Mr. Olympia. And Arnold won that.

And I'm pretty sure, he, yeah, he came, he won 1975 Mr. Olympia. Arnold won the 1976 Mr. Olympia. Arnold won the 1977 Mr. Olympia.

Arnold won the 1978 Mr. Olympia. And I think he won the 1979 Mr. Olympia. He might have won the 1980 Mr. Olympia, but I think he took a break and he came back a couple of years or a few years later, and then he won that Olympia, maybe the 1984.

Unless he won the 1970 Mr. Olympia, 1971 Mr. Olympia, 1972 Mr. Olympia, 1973 Mr. Olympia, 1974 Mr. Olympia. No, I think he won the 1971 Mr. Olympia, 1972 Mr. Olympia, 1973 Mr. Olympia, 1974 Mr. Olympia, and 1975 Mr. Olympia. And then he came back in 1980 and he won Mr. Olympia in 1980.

That's what I think happened, because in 1969 and 1970, he, or 1970, the year before he won Mr. Olympia, he came second to Sergio Olivia, who was the Mr. Olympia before him. So I think he came second to him, perhaps two years in a row. And then Sergio Olivia, I think, retired and Arnold took over and became Mr. Olympia the following year and stayed there for about five years and then went into movies.

So the pumping iron would have been possibly the 1980 Mr. Olympia, because Lou Ferrigno, no, it probably would have been earlier, wouldn't it? Probably the 1975 Mr. Olympia, because Lou Ferrigno then went on to play The Incredible Hulk, the television show, for quite a few years. And that was the late 70s, wasn't it? That started, I think, because I had this memory of watching The Incredible Hulk when I was about eight. That's the sound of Andre running around.

So nice. The thing is, because I make these recordings and I do them, and I'm really, really lucky to have my home that I'm living in, lucky to have this place. It's spacious.

It's a home for life if I behave myself. I start having massive parties and disturbing all the neighbors and I could get kicked out. But generally, as long as I behave myself, I've got this place for life.

And because Andre, I like Andre to have the run of the whole place, apart from the storage room. And he goes, and sometimes when I make a recording, I do put him into the bedroom so that he doesn't disturb the recording. But I just feel a little bad.

I don't want to put him, I don't want to segregate him. I've seen what's happened in other countries with segregation and I don't want that to happen to him. I don't want him to feel included.

I think inclusion is very important, which brings you back to The Incredible Hulk. So I'm sure that used to be on the late seventies. It's one of my favorite programs that was.

And that's another thing, I was saying earlier, if you're still around, awake and listening, if you can remember, I was talking about the science teacher said, yeah, we're looking for someone that's enthusiastic. And Bill Bixby, who played The Incredible Hulk's human version, he played Dr. Banner. I think it was David, was it David Banner? And he said, he used to say to people, don't make me angry.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. But again, it was quite calm the way he said it. It was almost like a silent fart.

It was very calm and not really threatening at all. But then of course he turned into the Hulk and became green. That was good.

I used to like that. He was a really good bodybuilder as well. I didn't really know him as a bodybuilder because I was eight.

And in fact, I'd be five or whatever when he was bodybuilding. And I was too young to know about stuff like that. I just wasn't on my radar, but it was really phenomenal.

He still is really big and muscly. He actually, he entered the Mr. Olympia again, not that long ago, in fact, only a few years back. And so I used to read these magazines, Flex, in the classroom.

I really wanted to be a bodybuilder. I just wanted to be big. I wanted to be, I suppose, big and strong.

And I never was able to. I could get the muscles, but only in proportion with the size of my body, in a sense. And it was a bit, yeah.

I actually had, I was quite lucky really. I had free membership at the local gym. I don't know how long I got it free for, but I got it free for about a year or something.

Because just around the corner, I was with my friend, Dean. And we were, it might not have been Dean, it might've been Neil, or it might've been Ivan. I'm not sure.

Anyway, it's one of them. We were walking around the corner. We might've been on our bikes.

I might've been cycling or I might've been pushing the bike. I can't remember the exact details or even sort of what time of year it was. I don't think it was raining though.

The reason I'm saying this is because I probably wouldn't have offered to help if it was raining. But there was this man struggling to get things out of the back of a van, a big van, and taking them into this shop. It looked like a shop.

And he said, what are you doing? He said, oh, this is a new gym. Starting a new gym. And there was a downstairs and upstairs to the gym.

And he was moving carpet in. I said, well, we'll give you a hand. We'll give you a hand to sort of move stuff into it if you give us free membership.

And he said, yeah. So I went in there and helped him to move stuff in. And I think, I'm not sure if it was just for a little bit or might've gone in there a couple of days and helped him, but helped move the stuff in, mainly carpets and not the actual gym equipment.

Cause that would be too heavy to, yeah, it probably would be, not all that. I suppose the benches wouldn't have been, would they? And maybe helped him to carry some of the lighter things in because it was free weights as well. I don't mean free as in just help yourself and take them home, but they were free, like not machines.

Because even back then there was a lot of machines and for like weights, you know, press up machines and machines for legs, working out your legs, machines for shoulders. So, you know, the bars where you pull down to work your back and your shoulders. And there was the ones where the machines where you could put your hand, your arms on either side and just, I just bashed the microphone, sorry.

And just pulled the pads together to work out the pectoral muscles. And so I didn't help. I don't think I helped with the machines because they were too heavy, but I did help with the, um, the carpet at least and other, some other bits.

So yeah, I've got a free membership in the local gym and I used to go down there, used to go a few times a week and always, you know, the one thing I like, I like doing curls, like with weights, because I think it's, it might just be a, it might be a thing that everybody sort of gets into when they first go to the gym. The first muscle to really show any kind of improvement seems to be the biceps. They're quite easy to pump up your biceps.

So I've got weights here, I could lift them for five or 10 minutes and my biceps would look a lot more pumped up than they do now. But it's a bit of a novelty, I suppose, especially for a teenage boy to start like, Oh, I've got, I've got a muscle. It probably was like the size of a pea, but to me it was, it was, you know, like some kind of inverted boil, but you know, for me it was all, it really just felt like I was muscly.

And yeah, so I used to go there. I think I started paying once I started work, but while I was at school, I got it in for free. So that was quite good.

So at that time, and I didn't need glasses, but then when I was probably 15 and it's, it's quite, I just remember this. I have a real memory of this is I got glasses because I was having just problems with vision and stuff. So I went, went to the opticians.

It's probably the same route that probably quite a few people go through, isn't it? Is they go to the opticians because they need help with vision. Yeah. Sight issues.

I suppose that's, that's a route for a lot of people. Yeah. So a lot of people go to the opticians because they need glasses.

So that's what I did. I went to the opticians and they gave me glasses and they said that I needed glasses all the time. I said, well, or even in the shower and the opticians looked at me thinking I was joking.

But you know, sometimes I take things literally and I, because I'd never worn glasses before, it was a novelty, but at the same time, I didn't know what was going to come my way. I didn't realize that everybody was going to like, other friends and people at school were really going to notice. And they did notice.

There was people that I'd never even met before or that I'd not even, not even registered that I'd been going to school for five years with coming up to me and saying, oy, you're wearing glasses. It's like, oh, okay. Thanks.

Because sometimes it was good that they told me because I'd, I'd forgotten. But it's very weird to suddenly have these things, these frames on my face, circling my eyes. Now I've got eye bags to do that.

I've got, but at the time I didn't, at the time it was just my eyebrows. Now I've got eyebrows and eye bags and wrinkles at the sides of my eyes. So my eyes are pretty much, I've got a nice little circle all the way around.

And I also had, I don't know if it was a lazy eye, but I had an eye issue where I needed to wear a patch in, I need to wear a patch on the good eye to train the, I suppose it was a lazy eye. It doesn't seem a very nice, a nice term to, you know, to call a part of your body lazy. It doesn't, doesn't seems a bit, you know, oh, your eye's just lazy.

That's a bit, seems a bit cruel. Lazy. It's just, it's not doing its job.

It's not doing what it's supposed to do. But it's not my eye's fault though, is it? You know, it's not like my eye's sitting there smoking a cigarette, reading a paper, just on strike. So I can't be bothered to do anything.

Is it time to go home yet? It's, it's not my eye's fault. And the optician said, I've got other people to see, you know? I said, all right, okay, I'll go. So I had these glasses and I had this patch and I had to do these exercises.

So every night I had this patch on and I had to do these exercises where I had to follow my finger or a pencil or something backwards and forwards and up and down and stuff like that. And I did it, I think. I think I did it.

But as far as I know, I haven't got a lazy eye now, but I might have. No one's ever mentioned it, if I have. I'm scared to take my glasses off in case, well, I haven't got like one eye poking, like looking up and the other eye looking forward.

It's not, it's, I think it was, maybe it was the focus. Or maybe it was slightly off or something. I don't, really don't know.

But so I wore these glasses all the time for probably about three weeks, four weeks, maybe three weeks. And it was just at the end of school as well. So I just came to the end of work, of being at school.

And what was it? Three days. I didn't wear them for long before I decided I was never ever going to wear them again, because I didn't like what people were saying. But I did wear them for reading, I think.

Yeah, I think I did wear them for reading, but I didn't wear them. Or maybe I didn't, I can't remember. But I didn't wear them out ever.

I stopped wearing them because I didn't like the response that I was getting. I didn't, I didn't feel that it was appropriate. But I didn't expect everyone to start worshipping me or, you know, someone just appearing out of the blue with a banjo, singing me a love song.

I didn't, telling me how wonderful my glasses were. I didn't expect that. But I didn't, wasn't really hoping for the attention that I got.

And I suppose I was with people that I'd been at school with for, since the age of, I don't know, nine to the age of, yeah, so that's, I left school just before I was 16. We left school in April, I was 16 in August. So I probably went eight, probably, actually, before I was nine.

So 10, 11, 12, 13. So seven years at least. So some of the people that I was at school with, I'd spent seven years with them.

Five years in high school, two years in junior school. So they were used to seeing me not through a lens, I suppose. I did wonder if it was, when I first got them, I wondered if for the other person, was it like talking to me through a window.

But I stopped wearing them anyway. And perhaps I should have kept on wearing them. But even my little brother used to make fun of me, and he was about two, two years old.

He used to put his hands into a circle and make fun of me, make out that I was, that my glasses looked like hands in a circle. Which they didn't, they just looked like glasses. And then when I was in the, didn't really bother with glasses, I don't think I even wanted them for reading, to be fair, until I was about 19, eight, yeah, about 19.

I got some glasses for reading, and I needed glasses for reading. And then since then I've been wearing glasses for reading, pretty much for the rest of 18, 28, 38, 40, yeah, so 30 years I've been wearing glasses for reading. And probably about five, four, three, four, I used to, when I was with clients, I used to wear glasses, just my reading glasses, because it was something, maybe I just, again, it was a bit of comfort for me.

It's a bit of, I don't know, a bit of safety. I don't know, but it's, I quite liked, maybe it's that Clark Kent feeling. Just, you know, to like a different identity.

But I used to wear my reading glasses when I was with customers. And sometimes I've worn them when I was at work, on the computer screens and stuff. And then a couple of, yeah, probably three, four, five years ago, about 2013, yeah, about 2013, I went to the opticians just to get my eyes tested again after the last two or three years.

And I was told that I needed to wear glasses all the time. And I said, well, even in the shower? And no response from that one. I think that it was hilarious the first time, but because it was 30 odd years ago that I said it, I think they probably passed it on from optician to optician.

And the optician I was seeing was probably younger than me. So it's probably just, it's become worn out. So that was original at the time.

It didn't really have the same effect as it had previously. But I was okay with that. You know, I've moved on.

It's fine. And I've got over it. It's okay.

So I had these glasses, but because I worked in an office on a computer screen most of the day, I ended up with, what do they call them? I had three different lenses in the glasses. I don't have them now, but at the time, three different lenses. So the top were for reading.

No, the top were for distance. The middle was for the computer screen. And the bottom was for reading.

Yeah, I think it was something like that. And it took a while to get used to it because they weren't, it was all kind of melded together into one lens. So you couldn't see that they were like that from the outside.

What was weird though is I felt like I was a lot taller or a lot closer to the ground. I forget which one it is now. Did I feel like I was a lot closer to the ground or a lot further away from the ground? So either I felt shorter or taller because it kind of distorted how far away the ground was from me.

It'd probably make a bit more sense if I sort of chose which one it was, but I forget. So I started wearing those glasses and I was fairly pleased with them. They were actor light or whatever.

So in the sun, they used to go become shades. And I wore those for a while. And then I had another eye test two years later and I needed some new glasses, new lenses.

So I ended up getting two different frames, one for reading and one for dancing and one for not reading, you know, just general seeing things. And then I think about a year and a half ago or a year or something, I went back and I got the long distance or the general use lenses put into my frames, my old frames, because they were really nice frames. And then recently, I don't know how long ago, maybe two or three months ago, I went back to the opticians and they gave me some new lenses.

And again, for reading and for general, you know, day to day stuff. So these are the day to day stuff, but they have got the actor light. So when I'm outside, winter or summer, the lenses go grey.

So it sort of protects my eyes. Sounded like I said it protected my eyes. I don't carry ice around.

How would glasses protect a bag of ice? And I noticed I'm not wearing the reading glasses very often, which means I'm clearly not reading as much as I perhaps could do. So I need to get back into that. I've just been focused so much on making videos and working on the website and all that stuff.

So that's the story of my glasses really. So there's nothing else to say. I'm going to go.

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