#47 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (16th October 2018)

Hello and welcome to Jason Newland dot com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. I think this is number 47, I think.

And the point of these, if you haven't had the pleasure of listening to my incredibly exciting voice before, the point of these sessions is that I just talk to you, or talk at you, about pretty much nothing. Just stuff. And basically you just get bored.

That's it. And you can drift off into a nice, lovely sleep. I'm actually quite tired myself.

I got up quite early today. Well, I didn't get up early, but I didn't have enough sleep. So I went to bed about 6.15. I'm not sure if it was 6.15 or it might have been a little bit later, 6.17. It might have been, it could have even been 19 minutes past six.

That's in the morning. But then that's the time I looked at the clock on my laptop. But then I went into the bathroom and made myself beautiful for bedtime.

So add another 30 seconds onto that. So it might have been 20 past six, possibly even 21 minutes past. I'm really not sure.

I didn't know I was going to get questioned on it. I didn't know. You know when you're not sure, you don't realise you're going to actually need to remember something.

Then, you know, for example, if someone said to you, oh, during your bus journey, notice how many blue cars you see. And, you know, at the end of the journey, you can say, well, maybe you saw three, maybe you saw six, maybe you saw 14 and maybe 32. You know, it could be any number of blue cars.

And maybe, you know, you'd kind of logged them. You might have even had a pad and just crossing them. You know, when you do one, two, three, four, and then you cross through to make five.

So maybe you did it like that. And then when you got asked the question, how many blue cars did you see? You know, at the end of the journey, you could say, well, okay. And you say, what's five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28.

28 blue cars. I don't know why anyone would ask you to do such a thing. But if you hadn't been asked to notice how many blue cars there were before the journey, and then you just were on the bus planning to buy some fruit.

Maybe you haven't had any fruit for a while. You know, maybe you have had fruit, but there was a specific type of fruit that you suddenly got the urge for. Maybe you'd had some pancakes and you had some lemon, you know, some actual proper lemon on the pancakes.

And you suddenly got an urge to start eating lemons. I remember when I was young, I used to get muddled up between melons and lemons. Because it sounded very similar.

And it's the same spelling, but the L with lemons, obviously, L is L-E-M-O-N-S, and melons, M-E-L-O-N-S. Or has melons got two Ls? I don't know. The first time I think I ever had a melon was, I think, when I was about eight, eight years old.

And where I lived, there used to be a park just around the corner, it wasn't far. And I could smell, it was a Saturday, kind of late morning, early afternoon. And I wasn't at school that day because I was never at school on a Saturday.

And there was this, because it wasn't open on a Saturday, and there was the park. And in the corner, near where the swings were, there was a, there was a smell coming from there. So I kind of couldn't, it's not that I didn't have bad eyesight, it's just the things were quite a long way away.

Because I think it's important to distinguish between eyesight issues and actually distance. Because I think it would have been, I'd have had weird eyes, and a weird eyesight, if I was able to see the other side of the park as clearly as I see my own hand right now. Because then that mean I'd have some kind of special superpowers or something.

And that'd be really unusual. Imagine if you had that kind of vision, and you could see something a really long distance. But that long distance, really clearly, it'd be really difficult to read a book.

Unless you have really long arms. Like Mr. Tickle from the Mr. Men books. And in this park, I kind of walked up.

I might have been with my brother. Or brothers, I might have been with both my brothers. Or I might not have been.

I may have been with one of my friends. But anyway, we walked to the park. And as I got closer, I got the smell.

Lovely smell of food, cooked food, and burgers, and hot dogs, sausages and stuff. And I thought, ooh. And I remember saying to my friend, or him saying to me, what do you mean ooh? What are you going ooh for? And I said, well, that's the sound I make when I smell something that delights my nostrils.

And he said, that's weird. I said, you're weird. And then we just carried on walking.

And as I got closer to where it was a crowd of people. It wasn't like a big group. But it was about 30, maybe 30 people all gathered.

And I didn't quite understand what was going on. You know, were they worshipping the swings? I don't know. It was National Swing Day.

I really wasn't sure. But it turned out when I got up there, there was people with barbecues. And they were Americans.

Some of the people there were Americans. And they were celebrating Independence Day. American Independence Day.

And they were making, they were basically making this food and giving it out to people. And part of what they had was these melons. And they were beautiful.

I mean, I didn't have a whole melon because they're too big, aren't they? You can't, how do you eat a whole melon? I suppose unless you just eat bit by bit, I suppose you could. But yeah, it was too much. I was only eight.

A melon was the size of my, bigger than my head back then. So I had this melon and I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. Tasted so fresh.

And this was on a, this was on like a summer's day. It was a really nice, bright, blue sky. Sunny, warm.

And I really liked that melon. So I suppose before I go any further, before I start, I should just let you know, only listen to this or watch the video when you can safely close your eyes because this let me bore you to sleep may cause boredom, which may lead to sleep. So it's just, you know, it's something I try to say every time, like not every time, not every conversation I have, but you know, when I'm making these videos, because if I was having a job interview and I say, only listen to me, if you can safely close your eyes, they might not give me the job.

But it's been a while since I had an interview though. I think the last job interview I had, oh no, wait a minute. Yeah, I did apply for a job at Sainsbury's.

It's a big superstore. And if you're in England and you're wondering why I'm describing what Sainsbury's is, it's because I've got a lot of people that listen to me and watch me from other countries that may not have a Sainsbury's. So I can't assume that everybody knows what references I'm making, although I will assume sometimes.

So if I say, you know, I had to buy some new underpants due to an accident, then you're going to understand what underpants are, you know, just as an example. So I don't know what you think of my hair. My hair is getting a bit long now.

Technically, you might think, well, it's not really long, is it? It's quite short, but it's longer than it was before when it was shorter. And it's now getting to the point where I perhaps need to cut it or maybe leave it. So it's really kind of at that point where either I need to cut it or not cut it, or kind of it doesn't really matter either way, you know, it's that crucial point.

And I was thinking, because if you're watching the video, you can see that I've got, my beard is growing back with, I was going to say with a vengeance, but that's a bit dramatic. It's growing, just naturally growing. And I was thinking about letting it grow really bushy and maybe then letting my hair grow.

And when my hair grows, it goes curly. And then it gets bushy and it's a bit of, you know, I could basically end up, my face and my head could end up looking like a testicle. You know, an uncared for testicle, untrimmed.

Although it's quite hard to trim testicles. But hey, I don't want to talk about that. The thing is, I thought, should I grow my hair long? Long, long, you know, like proper down to my shoulders, middle of my back.

And let my beard grow massive. I suppose it'll keep away gold diggers, but I don't know. It's that kind of, that fine line between wanting to let myself go completely and not take any care in my appearance and just completely let myself go.

And on the other side of that fine line, hoping to one day have physical contact with a woman again. It's, you know, so I don't know. At the moment, the letting myself become a big hairy monster seems to be the way I'm going at the moment.

It's something about just being a furball. A furball is, seems to appeal to me. I want to get to the point where you can just, this is a small bit of me that's actually, that you can see and the rest is just hair.

I get so long, my hair can get so long that it even kind of covers up most of my face as well. I think that'll be funny. So that's possibly what I'm going to do.

Maybe just for a year, just see how it goes. So maybe between now and the end of next year, because we're now middle of October, so near the end of the year now nearly. So maybe if I just keep growing my hair and my beard, don't trim or shave or anything for, you know, the whole of next year.

And then I can see what I look like. And then if I change my mind and decide maybe I'd like to have some human contact again, you know, just the touch of another human, then maybe I'll shave it off or trim it. But yeah, I like the idea of, I just like the idea of being sitting on a train and people looking over at me and not really being sure what I am.

What is it? Is it human? So yeah, I like that. That appeals to me. I've had lots of different hair experiences.

So when I was really young, probably about six, five, six, I had really, really, really big hair. Really, really big hair. But that was kind of the way back in the seventies.

If I'd been able to, I would have had a big beard as well. But, you know, I was five. There was limits to what I was able to produce.

But hair on my head, and at that time my parting went down to about there. Like the, you know, where my hair, the root of my hair was really low. And my forehead has grown.

It's quite weird because as my hair has receded over the years, it's a little bit like how the world has broken up. You know, the plates moved, I don't know, maybe millions of years ago, and broke the continents or whatever, so that you can see how they might have fitted together in the past. And it's like I've got these little islands where there's maybe a little group of hairs, but then there's one hair on its own.

And I can see there's about that much of a gap where it's just receded. It's just lonely, a lonely little hair. It's like as if it's shipwrecked or something.

Just there. The hair. But at the moment, it hasn't evaporated to a level that's really concerned me.

When I was younger, when I hit 30, 29, 30, I started to notice the movement, the retreat of the hair follicles. It's like they'd been going to battle with my eyebrows and they decided to retreat. My eyebrows had won the war, the follicle war.

So now my eyebrows are starting to sprout out weird hairs, like, you know, showing off, like they're showing off. Look what I can do. Yeah, the rest of the follicles of my head are just like retreating.

Okay, you win. You win, eyebrows. And I think the beard, the beard puts my hair off as well.

I thought it might work the other way around. I thought if I grew a beard, maybe the hair on my head would get a bit of encouragement, feel a bit more confident maybe to start moving forward again. Not too far, I don't want it all to join, but you know, just a little bit more down.

But it doesn't seem to be happening. I've got two hairs just there and there that are just on their own. Like they, you know, they're solitary.

They broke away from the pack. They didn't want to be with the rest of the beard. It's like they wanted to, we want to be our own beard.

We don't want to be part of your gang. We have our own mind, our own thoughts. We don't want to be brainwashed by your beard, by your beard stories.

So maybe that's what it is. They broke away. Maybe I'll have a new little beard there, just there.

And there's two there. Maybe they'll mate and there'll be more produced. So when I was five, I used to have really, really, really curly hair.

Really, really curly hair. Really big. It was, it didn't bother me, you know, when I was five or six.

I didn't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror being concerned about my appearance. You know, I was sitting there thinking, oh, I'm never going to get into Vogue. I'm never going to be on the front cover of Maxim and Vogue.

I just want to be a catwalk model. That didn't enter my mind. I wasn't interested in that stuff.

I just wanted to chuck bottles at the gardener, which is a terrible thing to say. I used to live in a place where there was a gardener and he used to shout at us and we used to chuck stuff at him. But I was a kid.

I just went along, you know, a bit like with the beard, you know. There's some very young hairs there and they just go along with the crowd. They don't maybe question exactly what's going on.

But I had really big hair. Really big. It made my head, I think, look a lot bigger than what it was.

So I had this little body. I was five or six. Very few five or six year olds have big bodies.

I mean, it's natural to have a small body. But my head was big. Not elephant man size, but just it was big in comparison to my body.

And I think it's probably maybe why I've had problems with my neck. Because it put a lot of strain on my neck from quite an early age. And it took me quite a long time to grow into my head, for my body to grow into it.

So things were into proportion. And then as I got older, I don't remember much about the type of hair cuts that I used to have when I was seven, eight, nine, ten. I have a memory.

I remember more how my brother's hair used to look. Because I used to see them. But I never really used to see my own hair.

Because I just didn't look into the mirror. I suppose the only reason I looked into the mirror just maybe before going out to school, make sure I got no bogies. You know, just things like that.

I just wasn't, didn't really, wasn't that bothered about how my hair looked or anything like that. Then when I got to about eleven, I started going to the Sea Cadets. And so the Sea Cadets is a place where it's a mixture of things.

It's those, there's some children might want to go join the Navy when they're older. Or they might be interested in sailing or water sports or things like that. See, I was never really interested in water sports.

I don't, even now I'm not really that interested in water sports because I'm not really, really into water. I'm not, never swimming or anything like that. I'm not really, didn't really interest me.

Still doesn't. Just not one, just not something that I've really been interested in. I have, because I was in the Sea Cadets, I was pushed into doing stuff.

I did learn to canoe a little bit. I learned to you know, roll over and get back. I went on rafts and I went on boats and things like that.

I nearly went water skiing once. But I decided against it once I was there, once I was in the water with the life jacket on. And I really, it was so cold.

So I just didn't do it in the end but when I joined the Sea Cadets it wasn't because I was interested in anything. I just, it just happened. You know when things just kind of just happen.

I must have gone along there with a friend and then we ended up staying. I mean, I'm not staying forever. I mean, we went home at the end but it's all going back and in fact I started before I was even old enough to start because I think you had to be 12 to start and I was 11 and they were all 10 or whatever and they just let me go anyway.

But once I started going there I think once a month or every two months or something they'd shave our heads. Not completely shaved but a crew cut. Maybe a couple of inches or something and we'd all kind of have the same haircut and for a while for probably a good couple of years that was my hairstyle.

Just a shaved head or you know, very short. It was okay. I mean, it was a bit of a novelty when it first happened.

It was a bit of a shock because I didn't realise how big my nose was until I'd had all my hair cut off. Like, oh my, really? Where did that come from? That's in the wrong place, surely. But yeah, so I just I remember I used to put my hand through my hair and it was like it was like stroking an action man's head.

If you ever if you ever had an action man when you was a kid or if maybe now it used to be really they used to like stroking their hair. It was nice. And that was what my my head used to feel like.

And then but you know because my hair level where it started was way down so it's, you know, I had a didn't have a very big forehead back then. I'm thinking maybe it's over the last few years maybe I've activated my brain a little bit and which has kind of grown my forehead maybe. I don't know.

So I used to do that. I used to have my hair cut there. And then after that we used to have my step mum's friends used to come around and cut my hair.

Maybe not just my hair but all of our hairs. Not all of not everyone's hair just people that lived in my house. And we used to it used to be alright.

And again at that time hair didn't seem that important. Didn't seem I don't know just didn't seem worth really thinking about. It's just a thing.

All my hair the same as all got toenails. It's you know it's the same thing. Although clearly it's not the same thing but isn't it made of the same material? Toenails and hair.

Is it glucoside or something? I don't know. But it's sort of same kind of material I think. Korea soap.

So I when I got a little bit older I started to become a bit aware a bit more aware of my hair. I remember writing a poem or trying to write a poem but I only managed to get one one sentence of it. I remember it.

It was was it I think if I can remember it. I'm now aware of my hair. Yeah that's as far as I got on that one.

I used to like to write poems and songs when I was younger. When I was a kid. I fell in love with a girl at school called Sarah.

And I was writing love letters and poems and writing songs for her. I've talked about it in the past. I don't remember if because some of those videos and vlogs and you know things like that have been deleted so gone forever but I might have I remember trying to think what the words were to the main song that I wrote for her was called Dear Sarah and I'm not going to sing it because that wouldn't be fair but I think some of the words I think it was Dear Sarah How do you do? See I didn't realise that that was a bit formal wasn't it?

Just now it's just come to me How do you do? It's a bit of a formal greeting it's not very not very romantic not as romantic as I had wished it to be that was how I I was hoping it was going to come across as pure romance a blissful sentimental line of blossoming discovery of love but it didn't so Dear Sarah How do you do? Hope you're missing me the way that I'm missing you How do you do?

Now she didn't really know who I was so the likelihood of her missing me was probably quite minimal I mean she knew who I was I was the person that kept giving her love notes but she did, you know we hadn't dated or anything like that and she didn't really know I don't think she was sitting at home worried about my you know my nutrition wondering I wonder what Jason's up to I'm not sure if she knew my name So it's Dear Sarah How do you do? Hope you're missing me the way that I'm missing you Do you think about me in your dreams?

If you do think about out out what it means not always what it seems it eems eems oo so do you think about me in your dreams? Well she doesn't really know who I am apart from vaguely she's not thinking about me during the day chances are she's not dreaming about me but I do I quite like the deepness of it bearing in mind I was I was only 34 at the time now it's 14 or 15 14 and do you think about me in your dreams?

If you do think about out out what it mean it eems oo okay the oo part isn't really that relevant but the if you do think about what it means so that part is seems to be leading to a some kind of philosophical question so you're you're dreaming about me what could that mean? what could that what could that be? what could be what could be behind that there's some kind of emotional longing that you know something that you need that only I can fulfill and then the bit so do you think about me in your dreams?

If you do think about out out what it means oo not always what it seems not always what it seems it eems so I'm quite pleased with that line not always what it seems it's a bit it could mean one thing it could mean another thing it may mean nothing but it's a questioning it's a well if you think about me what does it mean?

and if you think you know what it means maybe it means something different not always what it seems now this next bit I'm pretty pretty pleased with well I was at the time and thinking back now I realised that how I managed to move on to be a a therapist feelings are not always shown during the day so feelings are not always shown during the day but when you go to sleep all your worries drift away a a a so that was quite quite nice I think so feelings are not always shown during the day I mean we're busy aren't we?

we can't always we might have the feelings but maybe not necessarily manage to be you know to attribute those particular feelings to a stimuli you know maybe a reason we might not quite be sure why those feelings are arising and sometimes the feelings don't arise we're too busy to experience feelings you know especially when I was at school I was busy hiding things from the teacher and lending money to other pupils so I didn't really you know sometimes I was I was distracted by other things so feelings are not always shown during the day but

when you go to sleep all your worries drift away a a a a and I like that especially as I've been focusing on helping people to release stress and you know helping people with sleep issues so the idea that when you go to sleep your worries can just drift away a a a and that seems like quite a quite an intelligent thing to know at that age or quite a deep kind of thinking so the next line is then your feelings start to arise showing something that you didn't realise eyes eyes eyes eyes so you

know then your feelings start to arise so you sleep and I suppose you know sometimes when we're asleep some of the issues maybe sort themselves out when you're asleep we heal our bodies heal our minds heal I didn't know that back then and there's a sense of comfort and calmness and looseness and safety that we experience when asleep comfort safety and healing so then your feelings start to arise showing something that you didn't realise I think that that sentence there was wishful thinking on my part I think I was hoping that she was gonna be

asleep and wake up and realise that she was in love with me so the next bit I thought I just you know I needed to do something original I wanted to because I was quite pleased with how the song was going I needed a chorus because I've just done the first verse I needed a chorus catchy of course you're not gonna get the real drift of catchiness without me singing it but I'm not gonna be singing it so if I just say it so if I would say something do something very original but also I

needed a way of including her name in the chorus so I couldn't figure out how to do it I started off by doing something original and I thought okay I love you there's nothing that I can do but I wanted to include a name in it and I couldn't figure how and then it just I was thinking about it I think that night I watched Doctor Who I kept just trying to sort of mull over how can I fit her name and then it came to me Sarah I love you there's nothing that I can

do there's something that you do for me can't you see E E E so I think that's quite self explanatory I'm just trying to express to her that there's something there's a feeling there that I kind of I don't really understand it but I've had a feeling of love a real sense of love so the feeling's uncontrollable the next line the feeling's uncontrollable I'm going out of my mind there's nothing that I can do I didn't know what to something to rhyme with do and I wanted the last line of the chorus I wanted to

have Sarah's name in it but something to rhyme with do so I just went for a walk in the garden and I think at that time a year there was conkers on the floor because we had a conker tree and I used to kick the conkers around some of the conkers were a bit soggy others were like really hard and I never really got into the whole the sport of conker conkers you know but and I was just sitting under the tree getting a wet bum because it was wet on the floor not quite sure

why I did that and it came to me the last line of the chorus Sarah I love you ooh ooh there was another another um verse but I can't remember what it is so that's it's not the only song I ever wrote I wrote a song when I was eight called Mandy let's have a drink there just trying to think the name how that song went dear dear Mandy how do you do no it didn't I'm joking it's it was Mandy baby listen to me Mandy dear oh no Mandy baby listen listen to me Mandy

baby I want you to hear Mandy baby listen to me Mandy baby I want you to see that's it Mandy dear I want you to hear I don't want a single tear I love you I love you Mandy I do I just want to know if you love me too just say something I want to know just say something like hello oh Mandy I love you Mandy I love Mandy I you love you Mandy love you Mandy Mandy you I love you Mandy I want you something soon too soon I I I don't know what

it was, even like young, when I was very young, just found girls to be more fun to be around.

So I played with her for probably the afternoon and then I think the caravan part we was in was, I imagine there was some kind of, not a nightclub, but there was a social club where you'd go in there and I probably, at that age, I was probably just running around with her and just playing chase or something, but I really liked her and then she, she had to leave the next day. It's funny that I still remember her name though. Maybe that's a way to remember things, write songs about them, that would be a good way to remember the alphabet, wouldn't it? I wonder why no one's ever done that, written a song for the alphabet to help people remember it.

Ah, could be a new invention. When I was about 15, maybe 14, 15, I decided to dye my hair brown, because I've got dark brown hair anyway, but I decided to dye it basically the same color that I already had it, which is, you know, I think it's a, it's a test, isn't it? Instead of just going for some completely different color, I went for something that was a little bit, it was more reddy brown rather than dark brown. And I had a half perm at one point as well.

And then when I was 16, I went to the hairdressers and I had my hair cut short and I dyed, got my hair dyed blonde, completely blonde. And I only had it like that for a short time and then I cut it off and basically went bald and I grew my hair again. And then when I was about 20, 21, I decided to grow my hair long, you know, really proper long.

And I knew that I'd have to go through the period where it was completely curly and distracting to overhead planes, basically really a bit, a bit all over the place. So I decided to do it anyway. I think I wore a hat quite a bit at the time and eventually it was long enough to put into a ponytail.

And once it was long enough for that, then I didn't have to worry about the curls because everything was kind of straightened. And I let it grow and it got to about the length for the middle of my back. I had it like that until 1994, the summer.

And I used to go into my hairdressers, the barbers, I used to go in there and just have a little trim because you still got to have the ends cut off of it. So I used to go in there maybe every six months, three months, four months. And he'd always used to get excited and he'd pretend to cut off the ponytail and he'd say, oh please, he'd say, please let me cut it off.

I said, no, he said, please, I said, no, he said, go on. I said, no, listen, I'm being serious now, I've got a time limit here. Can you just please just do what I ask? That was an uncomfortable haircut, but I eventually one day, I just couldn't get my brush through my hair and I just thought, that's it.

So I went around the corner and I said, do it. And honestly, he got so excited, I'm sure he lactated a bit. And he came and he cut it off and I had a nice little haircut and it was lovely.

It felt very, my head felt cooler because it was a summer and I felt a bit more freer in a sense because I wasn't, my hair was being pulled into a ponytail, so it was quite, quite tight a lot of the time, you know, my scalp was being pulled. So now I felt a bit more relaxed. And then later on, I just had like normal haircuts really, same kind of hairstyle for years, just short at the sides, short at the back, a little bit on top, you know.

And then in 2002, I started shaving my head again, which was a little bit of a surprise for people that I worked with because they'd never seen me without hair. And I think one person thought I was ill, but I was like, no, I just cut it. And I had it short, really, really short, like shaved or crew cut for absolutely years and years and years.

And now the last few years, the last 10 years, I kind of go in between of letting it grow a little bit and then just shaving it all off. And the last time I shaved it completely was probably three months ago, possibly two months, three months. This is how it's ended up.

This is my hair now. It's very, I don't know, I think it's all right. It's just hair, isn't it, really? But I'm thinking of letting it grow long.

I don't know if I'd bother with a ponytail though. I might just let it just go wild. So that's what I'm thinking of doing.

So that's the story of my haircuts throughout the years. Now I'm going to go and do something else. So thank you for listening and watching.

Bye. Lots of love.